User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-45692830-20200511054726

This discussion began in Thread:272784, but it began to divert attention away from the main topic of the thread, so has been moved here.

Due to the airing of The Zygon Isolation (webcast), we find ourselves in a rather interesting position. This webcast shows us a variety of icons on the right hand side of the screen throughout, and later pulls up a web browser. In doing so, it seemingly introduces three "meta" elements into the webcast, Big Finish, DWM, and Tardis|Fandom. Now, the webcast is currently valid, and most people currently seem to be happy with that, apparent fourth wall breaking is not inherently a bad thing. But it does raise some questions.

First and foremost, do we even acknowledge these things outside of "behind the scenes" sections? Strictly speaking, T:NO RW tells us that we shouldn't, the "Big Finish" icon in the webcast could mean anything. But currently the article for the webcast does assume that this refers to the Big Finish we're aware of. Moreover, it assumes it refers to an out of universe Big Finish in how it links.

Which leads to the second question, if we acknowledge these things, do we acknowledge them as fully fledged in universe articles, or just mention them in the articles they appear in and move on? At this point the articles will be little more than stubs, and by the strict text of T:NO RW we just say "this is a thing that exists and showed up on Osgood's computer. Behind the scenes: It actually refers to this out of universe thing."

Third question, should we change current policy and stop playing coy and admit that when we see a reference to something related to the show out of universe, like Big Finish from within universe, it's meant to be the Doctor Who (The Thief of Sherwood) equivalent? That way we can actually talk coherently about these things and not just express complete shock and confusion that Osgood has a DWM icon on her desktop when we all know what it means.

Fourth question, given that this wiki has now been shown to exist in universe, how should that be handled? Should there be a page for this wiki? What should this page be like? If the page about this wiki appears in universe, should we have a policy in place to stop things from breaking down into some form of horribly confusing labyrinth of self reference? Does this even matter or will we cross this bridge when we come to it? Or should we just avoid the discussion entirely because all we saw is a website that said "Tardis|Fandom"?