Talk:Charity publication

Individual publications
Because these publications are not a legal part of the Doctor Who franchise, a forum decision was made to not cover these publications on this wiki. Therefore, no pages should be created for these stories/anthologies. Shambala108 ☎  04:48, March 3, 2015 (UTC)

Anthology section expansion?
Should this page be expanded so that an infobox could be included for each anthology, listing all of the stories within. The infobox could also note which stories were later adapted into stories that are covered on this site, as well as which stories feature licensed uses of characters from the DWU. PoolsideJazz ☎  20:13, October 23, 2020 (UTC)


 * Please read the comment above yours, but in short, we do not cover charity publications on this wiki. Shambala108 ☎  20:25, October 23, 2020 (UTC)
 * The comment above talks about not making pages for these stories, which I totally understand, but (as these publications are already listed on the page) I think it would be good to create infoboxes with each of the stories from these publications. The infobox could include; who wrote it (only linking to writers with other work within the DWU) as well as any licensed characters used such as; Miranda Dawkins in Iris Explains, etc.


 * This information is already available on this site but you need to go looking for it. Collecting all the information here would be extremely helpful. PoolsideJazz ☎  20:43, October 23, 2020 (UTC)
 * I also agree that while the Tardis Data Core doesn't cover the stories, there should be a *little bit* more information at least on this page about the stories. Epsilon  (Contact me) 21:05, October 23, 2020 (UTC)

While it is nowhere near complete as I have just whipped it up now, I was thinking about something like this for each anthology;

Walking in Eternity

PoolsideJazz ☎  22:19, October 23, 2020 (UTC)
 * I'll need to have a think on whether to proceed with this, but note that the Walking in Eternity version of In the Sixties doesn't have Dr Oho — it has, well, "Dr Who". (What Doctor is sort of ambiguous. The illustration depicts him as the Cushing Doctor, but he's mentioned to be in exile on Earth and a TV show show host, implying he's the Season 6B Second Doctor from the post-War Games TV Comics.) Dr Oho is a stand-in for him in the commercial version, similar to how El Jefe fills in for the First Doctor on occasion. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  22:30, October 23, 2020 (UTC)


 * I like this idea. Information about charity anthologies is almost impossible to find on the internet, making it an obvious candidate for this wiki, and this idea lets us do that while still keeping all the information confined to one page. Not to mention how helpful it would be for our coverage of valid, in-universe characters and concepts who originated in invalid charity stories, such as Carmen Yeh or Last Contact. – N8  ( ☎ / 👁️ ) 01:58, October 24, 2020 (UTC)


 * While I like this idea, I'm not sure if it conforms with current policy (this is not to say I think it doesn't, I'm just noting that my interest for this idea comes with the caveat that this wiki doesn't correspond with my idealized version of it, as I'd also prefer us to better cover, for instance, fan culture during the wilderness years, as that's a topic that is woefully documented elsewhere, or any number of such Doctor Who marginalia that aren't compiled elsewhere). If this was to happen, the licensed/unlicensed split might be difficult to actually do without asking the author. Najawin ☎  02:14, October 24, 2020 (UTC)


 * Personally, I think tables like these are a very good idea! However, I think that the table should only have three columns: "title", "writer", and "additional notes". In the Sixties is actually a great example for why this would be beneficial, because it would allow us to note (alongside all the other information that the above table already includes, albeit in sentence form) that the setting of In the Sixties was almost returned to in a deleted scene in The Blue Angel. With this and other similar cases, the ways in which charity stories are significant to the official DWU cannot be easily articulated without a notes section. CoT     ?  04:27, October 24, 2020 (UTC)


 * I think this suggestion improves the original proposal considerably. Here's a (extremely abbreviated) version of the example table for Walking in Eternity, adapted to User: CoT 's suggested format (and with some additional notes!) to show off how versatile this format would be.


 * – N8  ( ☎ / 👁️ ) 18:36, November 16, 2020 (UTC)

This definitely improves upon my suggestion. @ScroogeMacDuck have you had any more thought about introducing this sort of thing? PoolsideJazz ☎  16:59, 9 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Something like this has been implemented at The Brenda and Effie Mysteries. And I also have a sandbox covering a few publications. RadMatter ☎  11:59, 30 January 2021 (UTC)


 * I too have a sandbox where I cover charity anthologies, but in the standard Tardis Wiki story page style. Epsilon  📯 📂 12:02, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Bafflement & Devotion: Iris at the Edges
Raising a discussion about the new Iris Wildthyme anthology from Obverse Books. This installment will include several stories from other charity publications; This release will also include stories already covered by this wikia; Bafflement and Devotion, Hospitality and Deleted Scene from The Key Lime Pie 2 Time. I thought that I would raise the discussion on whether this anthology should be covered by this site - despite itself being a charity publication - before its release, if that's allowed, so that it didn't cause problems later down the line. Personally I think that this release should be covered by the site as it is an important part of Iris Wildthyme history. As most of these stories were released originally in charity publications some of them may include characters that they didn't have licensing for (Cabinet of Changes with the Doctor, for one) and these should be invalid. RadMatter ☎  14:01, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
 * In the Sixties (from Walking in Eternity)
 * Being an Extract from ‘The Amazing Adventures of Iris Wildthyme on Neptune’ (from Tales of the Solar System)
 * An Unearthly Palaver (from the G’day for the Doctor convention)
 * Entertaining Mr O (from Perfect Timing)
 * It’s Raining Again (from Perfect Timing)
 * Iris Explains (from Missing Pieces)
 * A World Apart (from the Iris Wildthyme Pages website)
 * No Place Like Home (from Shelf Life)
 * Faking It (from the Iris Wildthyme Pages website)
 * Iris Wildthyme and the Spiders from Magrs (from Walking In Eternity)
 * Iris and the Outsider (from the Iris Wildthyme Pages website)
 * Cabinet of Changes (from Walking In Eternity)
 * Lost, Presumably Illogically Ignored (from an old FTP server)
 * When Iris Met Billy (from A Second Target for Tommy)
 * That is unfortunately not how any of this works.
 * Firstly, it's a bit of a toss-up whether T:SPOIL applies to things which the Wiki does not cover, but that is the only reason I'm not deleting the above post on sight. If we were going to cover this, even as invalid, then you could not give a table of contents like this, or indeed acknowledge the book's existence, earlier than its official release date.
 * Secondly, as documented at Tardis:Valid sources, the Wiki takes the view that charity publications inherently fail Rule 2 by virtue of not being commercial uses of whatever licenses the publishers might happen to possess. Some of the stories in this book, such as the ones which had previous been released on the defunct Iris Wildthyme Pages website, are worthy of coverage regardless, but we should not acknowledge their charity printing.
 * Thirdly, there is absolutely no precedent for stories being covered-as-invalid when they fail Rule 2 (except for Dimensions in Time, which is absolutely one-of-a-kind and should not be used as precedent for anything). Either we cover something or we do not — if any of the necessary DWU licenses are missing, then we kick it off the Wiki altogether.
 * I also invite you to go over T:NO FANFIC again as for this release being "an important part of Iris Wildthyme history". T:NO FANFIC is an arguably-arbitrary line-in-the-sand that the Wiki draws. Even things like Devious or Gene Genius, which most people in their right mind would consider of greater relevance to Doctor Who, and more "canonical", than, say, The Orbitus, can fail this rule, and if so, we are without mercy.
 * At an absolute stretch you could argue for the book to get a single overview page like the Audio Visuals, but that certainly wouldn't translate to individual pages for the unlicensed stories. And even then, we don't have a page about Campaign despite it being a much more notorious charity-published footnote in the history of the DWU. Scrooge MacDuck  ☎  14:15, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I would personally want at least an overview page for this anthology, due to it's importance in the Iris Wildthyme series. Also, I would prefer greater coverage of charity publications, due to there not being much information about these books on the internet. It's in the interest of the readers, and we wouldn't have to cover the unlicenced stories anyway - and yes, I also believe that this Wiki should have pages for thins like Campaign, Gene Genius and Devious. One final thing: fan fiction is an extremely nebulous term, as it could be applied to even the 2005 revival of Doctor Who, so when the forums re-open, I would want to discuss how "fan fiction" is extremly vague. Epsilon  📯 📂 14:24, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
 * By all means present a case in the forum to give Audio Visuals-style coverage to other unlicensed works. However, a cursory investigation of T:NO FANFIC will show that there is nothing ambiguous about our usage of the term. When we use the term "fanfiction" in policy matters, we are referring to works which revolve around licensed concepts to which they do not have the rights; to things, in other world, which fail Rule 2 of T:VS.
 * The wording of T:NO FANFIC acknowledges that licensed works can sometimes be called "fan works" or even "fan fiction", and that this is not what is being meant when we say T:NO FANFIC. It is, as you say, very easy to imagine Russell T Davies saying an interview that The Stolen Earth was "fanfiction that he somehow got away with broadcasting for real", or some other such thing; and that is neither here nor there for our validity rules.Scrooge MacDuck ☎  14:36, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

The compromise position here seems to be the table-of-contents approach from the above "Anthology section expansion?" proposal. That way we can avoid creating an invalid page for the anthology, which would open a whole can of worms about where to draw the line between charity publications, fanzines, fanfic, etc; but the anthology can still be referenced in the "History" section of Iris Wildthyme (series), along with a pointer to this page for more information. – N8  ( ☎ / 👁️ ) 16:29, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
 * An amendment to this idea, proposed on Talk:The Brenda and Effie Mysteries (series), would be to only list the stories that are noteworthy (literally: those which deserve notes; those which have been mentioned in the BtS sections of in-universe articles). This would definitely make the page much shorter; I initially felt very strongly against it, since the lists of stories in charity anthologies are often very difficult to find and this would be good information for a wiki to compile, but it could always be relegated to one of the many other Dr Who wikis in the FANDOM network. – n8 (☎) 17:35, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Oh good gravy, most of the supplement Wikis are terrible. (Though not all!) I think trying to keep as much info on this Wiki as possible is the best option. Epsilon  📯 📂 17:41, 31 January 2021 (UTC)


 * I honestly see no need for this compromise. It is made very clear at T:NO FANFIC that we are not affiliated with the existing "Who Fanon Wikis" like DWExpanded, so we cannot officially rely on them to do a job we do not do, in the way we can rely on the Lockdown!, Legacy or Faction Paradox Wikis for some things which fall between the cracks of our T:VS, because those Wikis are our descendants, and remain our esteemed associates.


 * With this in mind: I actually came to this page to rule the following, discussion having largely wound down: that if an anthology has noteworthy contents — whether because some of the stories in it are by people we already have pages about, or because they have some sort of interesting tie to legal Who — we give it a whole table on this page.


 * However, under no circumstances are we to give individual charity anthologies pages. Even the "make more Audio Visuals-type pages" proposal I mentioned earlier was geared more towards things like Campaign or Gene Genius than charity anthologies for which this very page is already a satisfactory record.


 * Where applicable, interwiki links pointing to the Faction Paradox or Lockdown! Wikis can be added in the tables for stories which fail Tardis's T:VS, but not theirs (such as that Time Wrestlers thing). Scrooge MacDuck ☎  17:47, 31 January 2021 (UTC)


 * I think this is the correct ruling, Scrooge.


 * The decision to remove stories from B&E pages that were not DWU-related (despite being contained within the same publication) confused me greatly as the pages for anthologies; Twelve Stories, Team Up, Resurrection Engines, etc, were all practicing mentioning each story that was contained within the publication even if some lacked DWU-related content. RadMatter ☎  17:53, 31 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Is my recent edit to this page acceptable under the new ruling? RadMatter ☎  17:59, 31 January 2021 (UTC)


 * I must once again emphasise that a series page is an entirely different beast from an anthology page (and that Charity publication is yet another, unique thing; my ruling here applies to it and naught else). If nothing else, an anthology is a single physical release, so we can expect a collector of DWU works to own the thing in full whether they like it or not; so its non-DWU contents are immediately more relevant than other works in a series which includes both DWU and non-DWU stories.


 * At any rate — your edit has got the right spirit, but we should work on this thing's structure; there should probably be an introductory sentence explaining the nature of the anthology before the actual table, for example. Scrooge MacDuck ☎  18:00, 31 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Thanks Scrooge. Yes, a paragraph beforehand is needed - I have done something similar below for The Chronosmith Chronicles. RadMatter ☎  18:03, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Prose and audio placement
After scratching my head for a while about how to best arrange things on the page, I interspersed the charity novels and charity anthologies. RadMatter reverted it because it was an unexplained change, which is fair enough, so here are my reasons: Please let me know your thoughts. I'm hopeful that we can move back to the chronological arrangement sooner rather than later. – n8 (☎) 21:05, 10 March 2021 (UTC)
 * 1) It's better for logical organizational purposes. For instance the "Seasons of War" series, which includes an anthology (Tales from a Time War) and a novel (Gallifrey). Right now those are separated into completely different sections with no clear connection between them, when in reality they're best understood as a single series. Similarly, Obverse's Cushing novelisations are best considered as part of their "Target for Tommy" series: quite literally, they're Target novelisations published to support Tommy Donbavand! But splitting by format means they're hidden in a different section entirely.
 * 2) Another upside: it joins together releases which were prompted by a singular event. Like the Tommy books, Time's Champion and Shelf Life were each inspired by the passing of Craig Hinton. This connection becomes obvious when the releases are placed next to each other in chronological order, but disappears when they're separated into separate "Anthology" and "Novel" sections.
 * 3) There are currently books that don't fit into any of the categories. For instance The Fescan Threat, which is neither a novel nor an anthology, but is currently orphaned in the "Anthology" section. Separating neatly into "prose" and "audio" would erase this confusion.
 * 4) From a purely practical perspective, ===== headers are tiny. Tinier than regular article text, in fact! By merging together the "anthology"/"novel"/"novelisation" levels of organisation, the tiniest header becomes ====, which is far more readable.


 * I agree, though, I would suggest, following the format used at The Brenda and Effie Mysteries (series) (which I know is not uncontroversial, so I do expect this to generate discussion), we trim down the page a bit by removing reference to stories in anthologies that are not "notable", ie, do not have a link through licensed usage of characters or a writer who has a page already on this wiki, such as Before the Beginning etc. We can then change the header to read,
 * Because of this, a community decision was made to not cover these publications in full on this wiki, however, many of them still have ties to the DWU, such as contributions from people who have worked elsewhere in notable capacities, and occasionally act as tie-ins to fully licensed works, and so merit some documentation.
 * (Obviously feel free to quibble over the wording). Najawin ☎  21:17, 10 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Do not agree with Najawin, I think that this page is incomparable to the Brenda and Effie series. The Brenda and Effie releases which are omitted from that page have no connection to the DWU, however all of these releases are connected to the DWU (as all are intended for DW anthologies) even if only some have specific links.


 * Nate, you do make a good point with The Fescan Threat, but I would much prefer an entire new section to cover this release rather than using this anomaly to ammend the rest. In my opinion the novels and novelisations are completely lost when among the anthologies, and separating the releases make them far easier to find.


 * In regards to the ==== heading, this heading would still be on the page whether the anthologies / novels were all together or not. ===== was added to separate the releases, which I do agree is quite small, however if we removed the headings for a series of releases then we are back to four ='s only. For example; we currently have Perfect Timing as the heading for Perfect Timing and Perfect Timing 2 - but I do not think that the extra Perfect Timing is necessary, these releases could simply be listed after each other and it would be understood that they are connected due to their titles. RadMatter  ☎  22:15, 10 March 2021 (UTC)


 * RadMatter, you've ignored my strongest arguments (1 and 2)! I don't think the novels and novelisations were lost on my version of the page, since by design I'd separated the novels and novelisations into their own sections. And each novel was clearly visible in the Table of Contents, which wasn't the case in the former formatting version. (I'll note also that if we follow Najawin's proposal, the ease of reading and the prominence of the novels would be even better!)
 * I'm not sure what you mean about heading styles; as I said in my original comment, I have no problem with ==== . And I disagree strongly about series headers being unnecessary: while Perfect Timing and Perfect Timing 2 may be obviously connected, the connections between Tales from a Time War and Gallifrey or A Target for Tommy and the Cushing novelisations are far, far less obvious, especially when separated by so many other releases.


 * Najawin, that's really a completely separate topic, and I'm of two minds about it. On one hand it would certainly shorten the page, which is hurtling its way up Special:LongPages at alarming speed; and frankly I'll take any excuse to not include all 270+ drabbles in A Time Lord for Change. (Maybe we can all just agree to leave that one a permanent stub. Dear lord.) But I'm also hesitant for a few reasons. Firstly, including every story is futureproofing: just because a story isn't recognised as notable now doesn't mean it won't be in the future. Secondly, for many of these anthologies, this page is the only complete table of content on the internet - several of the story lists I've added have been manually transcribed from my copy of the book. Sunk cost fallacy aside, it still seems wrong to delete 90% of the stories in each list. A compromise position would be to just move the full lists elsewhere; personally I don't like relying on other wikis due to the relative likeliness of negligence and permanent vandalism, but maybe there'd be some way to store the information at Tardis Data Core without actually giving the books their own pages? Charity publication/A Time Lord for Change, perhaps? – n8 (☎) 22:42, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

I did think about that, and my view was that the edit history will always have the completed ToC etc. Obviously this is not easily searchable for someone, but it's not like we're just deleting the information, it's still there, and you can direct someone to an old version of the page if you want. But a lot of my concern here is that in the last week we've added 21k bytes, or something like a third of the current page. Obviously at a certain point we're going to approach asymptotic growth, but we're not there yet. Najawin ☎  23:01, 10 March 2021 (UTC)


 * I agree it's a problem, and considering that the release rate of charity anthologies has picked up a bit in the last few years, I'm not sure there'll ever be a limit. Hell, when I was putting together Unbound, my plan was for the print edition to be limited in length but for the ebook to include every submitted story or pitch. That part of the plan didn't come together - fortunately, for the wiki's purposes, given how many pitches I received! - but I can't count out the possibility that someone else will take up the idea one day.
 * You're technically correct about the edit histories, but it's an unsatisfying solution to the problem for about a hundred reasons, all of which you already know. Given that this wiki is for the not we, it seems a tad bit unreasonable to ask someone to learn how edit histories work just to find the table of contents for Shelf Life. – n8 (☎) 23:59, 10 March 2021 (UTC)
 * To clarify, my comment re:edit histories was more that I'm not entirely sure this wiki should be the place where we list the table of contents for Shelf Life. (At least, not under current policy. I would love if it was, my personal view of the ideal form of the wiki is substantially larger and more engaged with fan culture/history than it currently is. [If this is confusing to a reader, think of the distinction between legal and moral.]) Having these ToCs in full form in an edit history that could then be linked to other people, say, through a Sandbox or a reddit thread, or a Tumblr post seems to me to be reasonable. Maybe I'm wrong, but it just feels outside the scope of the wiki's current policy. Najawin ☎  08:40, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
 * We have pages for fanzines, so I would support each anthology being given a page of its own. Obviously the pages would need to state why these individual stories do not qualify for pages of their own. RadMatter ☎  11:27, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree with you both, in Najawin's vision of the wiki's ideal form, and RadMatter's suggestion. The best analogy to Category:Fanzines, which contains pages for fanzine series rather than individual issues, would be a page for each book or series of books: Perfect Timing would cover Perfect Timing and Perfect Timing 2, whereas Shelf Life would just have Shelf Life, since it was the only release in the Shelf Life series. I support this proposal wholeheartedly, but it would probably merit a full forum discussion. In the meantime, RedMatter would you be okay with me merging the novel and anthology sections again, in the knowledge that it's a temporary compromise? – n8 (☎) 18:59, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes. RadMatter ☎  19:14, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Note re. Time Scope
Just noting for future reference incase it should become decided that it would also be considered notable to mention on this page, that Time Scope does also feature brief interviews with some cast and crew as well as pieces of fiction. Additionally, there is a story between Dave Ladkin's Note To Self and Blair Mowat's Words for the Overture that is missing. I had left the space for it blank as I cannot add it myself (being the author of said piece) but since someone has understandably removed what would've looked like an error - I suppose it's worth noting here incase anyone wants to complete that at some point. JDPManjoume ☎  23:03, 10 March 2021 (UTC)