User:Najawin/Sandbox 5

Threads to be created when the forums are back
Please note that anyone is more than free to edit this, it'll allow us to coordinate, just make a new section with your username.

Other users can feel free to take on some of these later threads if they want, these are roughly arranged in the order I plan on doing them

 * Faction Paradox N-Space vs just Faction Paradox in popular culture and mythology. (see Talk:Doctor Who (N-Space))
 * Maybe put back T:FAITH? I noticed it was deleted in the past and Nate had some issues with it as well. Might be helpful to reinstate it.
 * The big one; Czech has asked that the discussion on Curse of Fatal Death be reopened because he has nondescript new evidence. User:Najawin has also remembered an old comment from Eruditorum suggesting that Moffat said something on rec.arts that might weigh against validity. I found it. Oof. (Further rec.arts comments, though not the original one mentioned at Eruditorum, can be found here, here, here, here and here.)
 * (Conversely, DWM 560, released since the closure of the thread, adds new evidence to the valid side by seeing a BBC-sanctioned publication doing a whole dossier on Curse which treats it as DWU to the point of including speculation as to how it connects to other elements of continuity. This recent interview with Moffat also has him looking back on Curse as potentially canonical, "as much as The Doctor (The Brain of Morbius)".)
 * We might want to expand our conflict of interest rules to stop close relatives from editing pages of people. As written, T:WIKIFY OWN does not forbid it. This has caused issues with, say, Russell McGee. The obvious issue though is that if we broaden this to friends/acquaintances then there are some DWU writers who won't ever have pages, basically.
 * Really, really dodgy topic, potentially opening discussion on When Times Change..., will need to do a lot more research into this. (See Talk:Legacies (short story), for instance, there is almost certainly more elsewhere, but I have no idea where.)
 * Another dodgy topic: Potentially discussing when the BBC uses things they lack the license to (eg, The Snowmen) - but I'd like some more solid evidence than rumors.
 * Because I'm that asshole - Adventures in Lockdown is a charity work (and some of the works in it only appear there and are still valid).
 * We might want to have a discussion about Antonio Amaral (Omega) and Bart Simpson, identifying characters based solely on image on solely visual formats. This is arguably a natural extension of things like saying the Movellans appeared in The Pilot, but it's caused some controversy, so we should discuss.
 * Maybe open a discussion about our usage of the new maps feature? I've only seen two toy examples using it, it hasn't really been implemented at all. And even actual implementations would lean almost exclusively on invalid sources. (Which raises the question of how many maps there are in invalid sources in the first place, or if we can use pictures that aren't explicitly maps with this feature and pin down locations for ease of users. Complicated issue.)
 * I'm sure User:Cookieboy 2005 would like Doctor Who Comes to MINECRAFT! to be discussed, so I'll remind him.
 * Some sort of discussion over user perms maybe? Special:ListGroupRights allows for a lot more freedom in how we assign permissions that we're just wasting. The earliest versions of Tardis:Administrators show a substantially larger group of people with admin rights. And while we don't necessarily need to go back to that, our current standards for adminship are quite large, and many people don't want to have that pressure, finding a middle ground where some users are given additional permissions for editing but don't dictate policy or ban people might be an idea to discuss. Honestly this is a wild thought and more to prompt discussion than something I have a firm stance on.
 * Expanding use of Transmat pages if/when we do the front page redesign. (There was desire to do this before the forums closed, and now that BBCA isn't dictating what we do with our front page, we can force through these changes.)
 * It's probably worth having pages on The Stranger and Time Rift, due to notability. (Not sure if there's a coverage debate of Time Rift, will look into this.) Validity of The Stranger can be debated.

=== EPSILON the ETERNAL  ===

Chubby Potato
Since the return of some sort of forums seems close, these are the things I think are most important to address, even if they have been mentioned by others. The nice thing about forums is we can work on multiple of these at once.


 * Addressing the spoiler policy, especially with there being a lot of info on upcoming releases readers are looking for that we aren't covering. As an extension of this, though probably a separate thread, redesigning the main page and theme, which is rather outdated by now.
 * Splitting The Master into separate incarnation pages. This page on one of the most important characters is practically unusable. The newly split pages can use disambiguation terms to begin with and then actual names can be discussed.
 * User:NateBumber's proposal on the use of subpages is another thing I think could greatly improve the wiki in many ways; as part of using subpages, also addressing things like image galleries, expanding real world info, information from invalid sources, and versions of a topic from other realities (I would like to use a subpage and categorized redirects with ).
 * As well as gallery subpages, our image policies are very outdated and need a lot of work. Particularly, I would like to address the absurdly small 100Kb limit, the somewhat bizarre standard for infobox images, and use of promotional images.
 * "Content warnings" and offensive content that really has no place on the wiki, as has been outlined by User:JDPManjoume below.

Other topics I would like to address, but they are not as pressing (yes, we love validity debates but they are not crucial first things to take care of):
 * Continuation of the discussion on allowing non-narrative fiction and modifying Rule 1 of Tardis:Valid sources.
 * Disambiguation terms – T:DAB TERM needs more/better dab terms. Not all existing ones are covered there, and not every narrative work of literature is a short story or a novel. This might go in hand with User:Scrooge MacDuck's related proposal below, which I strongly support.
 * Validity of video games such as Legacy and Infinity, which only remain invalid due to an unfair, crucial misunderstanding of the medium. (Also related to the "branching paths" discussion others have mentioned.)
 * How to handle The Doctor: His Lives and Times (although, this should probably wait until the outcome of the aforementioned non-narrative fiction discussion).
 * This might require too much work for a relatively unimportant change, but an idea I had was implementing a template that makes story dab terms in page titles italicized. e.g., "Tenth Doctor (Journey's End)" becomes "Tenth Doctor (Journey's End)". Update: I have created the template at.
 * Various discussions that were ongoing at the time the forums disappeared. A lot of these were validity debates, but another one I would like to reignite was "What counts as an appearance?"

Scrooge MacDuck

 * T:DAB STORY should apply to all fiction. The rule that stories don't automatically get dab terms serves no practical purpose and just leads to inconsistent dabbing (since a number of invalid stories do need to be dabbed anyway to prevent ambiguity). This should also apply to non-narrative fiction: the dab term "(feature)" should be universalised.
 * The AAiT&S story Infidel's Comet was deemed outside the Wiki's bounds due to the mistaken belief that it merely considered a brief allusion to a Sontaran, akin to a cultural reference to Who. However, BV are advertising it on the basis of the appearance by a Sontaran, with a "#DoctorWho" tag, and, having listened to it, it actually also features a Zygon in a non-trivial role and a cameo by an Auton. The explosive cobalt blue, from the Sontaran story Old Soldiers, is central to the plot of Infidel's Comet. This is clearly licensed spin-off territory. A thread will be needed to determine whether it's valid or an invalid story in Rule 4 term, but I can't imagine it'll stay off the Wiki wholesale based on these new developments. (EDIT: …Okay, now they've literally said "it is set in the Doctor Who universe in so many words. Yowzah.)

RadMatter
OTOH, while it would make some amount of sense, we're really never going to deem an out-and-out fanfilm like Time Rift a valid source. But we could stand to give it a real-world, invalid page similar to our 'coverage' of the Audio Visuals.]
 * There should be a discussion in regards to retroactive coverage/validation. Stories such as the the Cyberon home-video and audios Cyber-Hunt and Cybergeddon should be covered on this site, despite having no preexisting DWU concepts at the time of their release, due to the fact that their characters and concepts were originally intended for DW and have subsequently appeared several times in valid releases. Another release that should be discussed in regards to retroactive coverage is the fan-film Time Rift which introduced the recurring character of Adrienne Kramer.
 * [Note by User:Scrooge MacDuck: I'd support the first proposal with the caveat that the story still needs to pass Rule 4: i.e. it needs to have been intended all along to be set in the DWU. Without that criterion, we'd end up having to cover Star Trek and most Marvel Comics!
 * [Note by User:Bongolium500: I believe Phoenix Court should also be included for similar reasons as it introduced Iris Wildthyme and has been confirmed by Paul Magrs that the Iris in this series is the same person as in the DWU. This would fail under User:Scrooge MacDuck's above stipulation. However, if that were to be changed to be that stories can be retroactively included into the DWU, that would allow this series in while still stopping us from having to cover Star Trek and Marvel Comics.]
 * [Note by User:Epsilon the Eternal: same goes for Magrs' other novels such as Exchange, Hands Up, and The Ninnies, etc, as characters and concepts from these were prominently used in his stories covered by the Wiki.]
 * […User:Scrooge MacDuck again, and my admin note was not an invitation to turn this thing into a forum-thread-by-any-other-name, you know. But for the record, Magrs "views everything he writes as being set in the same universe", so by definition, if at any point he has identified that universe with the DWU, all his stories would pass my standard too. Don't worry.]
 * [Note by User:NateBumber: My T:SUBPAGE proposal and its implications for might alleviate some of this pressure in the meantime.]


 * Just noting the individual retroactive coverage/validation discussions that need to be had;
 * Coverage/potential validation of BBV Productions's Cyberon home-video and audios Cyber-Hunt and Cybergeddon. Along with Vital Signs, due to the character of the Wanderer first appearing in Cyber-Hunt, and Infidel's Comet as a result of the Sontaran appearance and numerous other links.
 * Coverage of fan-film Time Rift albeit in an invalid capacity
 * Coverage/potential validation of Paul Magrs' work including; Phoenix Court, The Brenda and Effie Mysteries, Exchange, Hands Up, and The Ninnies, and other stories.
 * Coverage of Audio Visuals stories which were later adapted into valid stories; The Mutant Phase, Vilgreth (released as Last of the Titans), Minuet in Hell, Sword of Orion, and Cuddlesome. Other Audio Visuals stories such as; The Time Ravagers, which originated concepts that have appeared in valid media, should also be covered in an invalid capacity.
 * Please, feel free to add other stories of interest.

Bongolium500
Ordered by my percieved priority and interests. Includes both my own and other people's proposals.

WaltK

 * Getting Doctor Who? and The Daft Dimension validated as taking place in their own parallel universes outside of N-Space.
 * Setting up Content/Trigger Warning tabs.

JDPManjoume
Any comments, or helpful subpoints to contribute, please leave at the bottom of the list - not within it.

Main priority items

 * Discussion on the necessity of pages for further derogatory terms of racial or sexuality-based discrimination.
 * The b-word used in The Shakespeare Code - though archaic, it is still a particularly strong term that leans towards the heights of the n-word in terms of offence for black people - particularly as like that word, it seems to have had a strong attachment to slavery. I have some discussion with other fans of colour and this is definitely one that is of particular unease (not helped by the Doctor's flippant response in said story to its usage)
 * The p-word - I've changed my mind on this one. At the time of the initial forum discussion, there was no strong opinion for me, but it has occurred to me that it is the height of derogatory language for South Asians. (even where the bigots in question are using it incorrectly) All of the page can move to racism - apart from Nightshade.
 * A bold thing to propose, but I think the remark Vijay makes in Nightshade ought to be held on the talk page of racism and left off the page to one side until it can have a discussion of its own. The writer evidently intended it to be a mockery of Hawthorne's bigotry, but the remark has become a divisive point - possibly the most divisive point in terms of racial slurs - in fandom... so I would think it best if we can get some sort of cited commentary in place for putting into the Behind The Scenes section before it goes anywhere. We're going to have some serious dig on that one, I feel.
 * Coloreds - another big one. Wasn't one that had given me any significant impact as a Brit, but having had some insightful conversations with US fans of colour, and looked at the real-world usage of the term again... I think we can move the Remembrance and Rosa points to racism, with the first as an indicator of how attitudes had changed enough by Ace's timeperiod that she was disgusted by the sign and the second as a (it will be a bit complicated to word this) indication of the confusing nature of the 1950s bigotry & how that confused Yaz regarding her place within that mentality.
 * Poof - I'd always intended when we had the slurs discussion before to leave this until a further discussion. Given that another person who would fit the term of LGBTQ+ whom happens to be a long-standing member of the Wiki has indicated their strong disapproval of this page as well, I feel comfortable moving forwards regarding tackling this one. All of these points noted on this page are rather indicative of the homophobic nature of the usage - so I would recommend moving them to the homophobia page, and focusing the points as part of the homophobic mentality of the individuals using them.
 * Cocksucker - the single usage employed here could technically be moved to homophobia, perhaps as an example of how homophobia can create such perceptions of bigotry in one's imagination.
 * A final point to tackle is whether or not Straight should actually be in the derogatory insults and name category. None of the remarks there seem to be derogatory.
 * Discussion of what to do with certain pages regarding anatomy - whether by locking, or by folding into a singular page, or something else.
 * About specifically the page for Breast - we don't need a dedicated page in my opinion. The breast cancer and breast implants remarks are covered on their own pages (and could also be reiterated where the anatomy stuff would go). The rest of that opening paragraph could then move to wherever the other items of anatomy go. And the CoFD material is actually already sufficiently covered on the etheric beam locators page. The quote from Combat can perhaps fill out Tommy's own page instead, or the plot section of Combat. Ditto for the GBB instance and Tosh & Ghosts of N-Space and Jeremy. Resurrection of Mars - I'll admit lack of familiarity but is there any reason to highlight Lucie's breasts in context of her disguise? I'm struggling on that myself. Then, we're just left with the I Am The Dalek, and Doomsday Manuscript - and I'm sure someone can figure out a proposal for how to tackle those.
 * Like the matter of slurs, what is particularly gained by having these separate pages? I'd argue that having all points referring to the anatomy of humans, at least, would be coverable on the page for humans instead. The items of anatomy (particularly the two very notables starting with c and starting with p) can surely be redistributed into either the Human page as a new section on human anatomy or perhaps into the currently one-line Anatomy page.
 * And where do we draw the line on these? - would having such an open scale not lead to a potential for becoming an unnecessary list of appearances? (I would not think we need a list of everyone's chests, navels and necks across every DWU story... nevermind the matter of nipples and breasts.)
 * In a more far reaching point, such matters - wherever they end up - should in my opinion be protected pages and restricted to statements based around exact quotations as the majority of this page is. That way, we would constrict ourselves to noting only what has been said in-universe (meaning the instances are documented primarily as a resource for anyone looking for examples of such things as written within the Whoniverse.) Keeping such a page protected would also mean that new additions would need to passed through the staff, meaning there'd be no scope for repetition of the Cleavage page situation and content that had fallen into the boundaries of being distasteful.
 * There are a few lines of Moffat that would be understandably sought out by anyone looking at the Wiki for instances of female character dialogue he had that was rather... teeth-grating, if I can put it that way. Perhaps we need a list page for such remarks that is clearly marked as something for people to use in academic discussions about characterisation could be done, and then those using it can make the arguments they wish using the quotations we've listed. If that makes sense?
 * Discussion about implementing phobia/trigger/content warnings on a handful of specific pages.
 * Namely, the mentions of sexual assault on Dodo's page should have one. Ed Morgan and Lizzie Lewis likely to be in need of one.
 * Discussion about implementation of non-heterosexual and non-cisgender categories for real-world individuals to compliment the existing in-universe categories.
 * Idea being implementation with addition to the category being conditional on being based on citations that the individual is non-het, non-cis or both. Preferably directly from the individual, but in some cases (particularly in years long gone by where people were not able to be so open) from other reliable sources.
 * Discussion of what to do with certain other pages in the vein of mature content.
 * Casual Sex and Oral Sex, as minimal pages with little individual value, if the content is to be kept, could be combined into Sex.
 * Cumming and Orgasm - they're both about the same story, they're both incredibly short, and they're providing no informational value at all. Something better to be done here, perhaps?
 * Continued discussion of Cushing validity.
 * We were getting somewhere really interesting with this just before we lost the Forums, so need to get a conclusion to that.

Secondary priority

 * Discussion about implementation of PoC categories for real-world individuals & potentially also in-universe characters.
 * Peter Davison and Richard E. Grant pose complex issue for this, but there aren't too many tricky points beyond that.
 * Discussion of Dimensions of Time validity (and by extension, the DW Yearbook story that ties into it).
 * See talk page for current prepared line of argument.
 * Discussion of Scream of the Shalka validity in terms of Rule 4 (particularly given the continued production of Blood of the Robots).
 * The story was commissioned as a continuation. The story was written to be a continuation.
 * The Shalka Doctor is marked as the Ninth Doctor in Doctor Who: The Legend. An official reference work notating him as the continuance of the TV lineage is notable.
 * Paul Scoones has shown me the Blood episode one draft script for a research project (and he can outright vouch for the following, of course) and the script is dated for December. This flies in the face of the notion that the decision in September and announcement in November halted Shalka Doctor.
 * Discussion of how best to approach the Leekley Bible/The Chronicles of Doctor Who?.
 * See talk page for current musings.
 * Discussion on complete restructure of List of Unproduced Stories - to instead focus on & separate stories by the degree of production they reached (from initial idea only, to fully scripted with some other production work undertaken). May not need one. To be figured out.
 * Discussion about best approach for Peter Wyngarde's birth date, year and location. May no longer need a forum discussion, after all.

Others' items that will need attention

 * Participation in Epsilon's "A clause to be added to T:NO RW, so that details from obscured props can instead be used from the real world prop." discussion; namely to ensure that any potential problematic impact that this could bring about in some cases - most notable of which would be Class.
 * Not open to discussing this until it comes up.
 * Participation in Epsilon's "The merging of TV and WC." discussion; to propose the idea that WC should become a 'legacy' prefix, used only for the items that were produced with the intention of being a webcast that was distinct from the contemporary concept of a TV episode. (preserves DCTT, Shada etc, whilst also preventing disastrous implications for Class.)
 * Class and modern streaming definitely mandates a change, but for instance, to have the TV Shada and the webcast Shada both notated as TV: Shada would be vastly confusing.
 * Participation in Bongolium500's "Validity of charity publications." discussion - with prefacing vested interest noted re. own involvement in some - depending on the charity publications for which this covers, may have to state strongly the case against making valid any of the publications for which I have been involved in, due to the monumental issues therein.
 * May actually propose a separate mini-wiki for these publications a la DW Lockdown Wiki, as an alternative to making them valid.

Danniesen

 * Toning down the current rules by A LOT. Especially the Spoiler policy. They are ridiculously slept on.

StevieGLiverpool

 * My main priority is really trying to get everyone to be less strict on video game validity. Even when the game is entirely linear, doesn't break any form of canon, completely licensed, fully narrative story - it's just slapped with the invalid banner of doom for no reason besides it's VR or had ties with non-valid games. C'mon.
 * [Note by User:66 Seconds: I completely agree. I've expanded on this in my point below. Our validity policies are completely out-of-date in this regard. I really feel they need updating as a matter of urgency, as we're seeing more and more video games and audience participation, which will only increase in the years to come.]

Borisashton
(There are many threads on this page which I would love to see started. However, for brevity, the ones listed below are just those which no one else has mentioned.)
 * Re-examining the strictness of parodies. T:VS explicitly invalidates parodies of Doctor Who but it doesn't really say what a parody is in the context of the Wiki and its validity systems. This is a problem because the dictionary definitions I can find are too broad and would, in fact, invalidate some stories we consider valid. The exclusion debate of A Rose by Any Other Name is the best example of this I can think of. A story in which the Doctor goes on romantic dates with Cybermen and Weeping Angels, it was reasonably labelled as a parody by some in that debate but its validity was ultimately upheld due to comments from author and artist Rachael Smith. I struggle to think of a definition of "parody" which could include Rose but exclude genuine parodies and I'm not sure DWU creators would necessarily be aware of the difference either. Thus, my best idea at the moment is to tweak T:VS slightly so that something being called a parody is instead very very strong evidence for invalidity but not the slam-dunk black-and-white picture it currently is. This means that if there is conflicting evidence for a story and one bit of it is someone's referred to it as a parody it can still be examined and ruled upon based all the evidence without the debate being closed as soon as that p-word is spoken, even if the eventual decision still ends up being a Rule 4 failure.
 * We should draw up some proper guidelines on what deserves a page in Category:Real world series with DWU connections when said connections are out-of-universe, with Talk:Vienna (series) working well already for series with in-universe connections. I'm not entirely sure where I'd personally draw the line on this, but it seems to me that pages such as Born and Bred should definitely stay whereas ones like Spaced should probably be purged.
 * This has bothered me for some time, but it is not too urgent of a concern. Post-2005 editions of the Doctor Who annual are named using the exact title seen on the cover while ones from before then use the convention Doctor Who Annual 19XX . The sole exception (which I'm only discovering as I write this) is The Dr Who Annual (1966), which was moved without discussion just last month in December 2022. We should be consistent and choose one way of titling the articles or the other. My vote would be on naming for the exact title, with searchability redirects all round for the "Doctor Who Annual XXXX" method.

66 Seconds

 * Updating our validity policies to fit the current decade. Based on a wave of new and evolving technologies over the last decade, I really think we need to discuss our validity policies as a matter of priority. Our current policies are out-of-date. I've outlined some of my thoughts at Talk: The Lonely Assassins (video game). Doctor Who is a multi-media franchise, so we should equally be a wiki for TV episodes, books, audio stories and video games. Our current policies mean most that video games fail validity. Over the last decade, we've seen a wave of new and evolving technologies, with advances in mobile gaming (The Lonely Assassins), VR growing in prominence (The Edge of Time and The Runaway) and more audience participation than ever before (Time Fracture). We have come far since the days of Attack of the Graske. Doctor Who is a show about time, hence branching storylines - common in video games - can easily be explained as alternate timelines. I'd argue that if we continue with our current policies, while technology and storytelling continue to advance, we risk compromising the factual integrity of the wiki as a whole.
 * Bulleted lists. Bulleted lists could be very useful in listing staff members of organisations and their roles, or the questions/answers on pages such as The Weakest Link. They are easy to read and easy to navigate. However, it appears that everywhere that a bulleted list is used, we also have the {Too listy} tag, stating that lists need converting into prose. Can we not just make lists more visually appealing; perhaps put lists in columns, or make them collapsible so that we can keep the lists, but they take up less space on the page?

Tellymustard

 * Reconsider the Validity of scream of the shalka
 * Reconsider the validity of Death Comes to Time (webcast) in light of information from Day of the Doctor (TV story).
 * Reconsider the validity of the VHS version of Shada (TV story) in light of information from Day of the Doctor.
 * Validity of Children's Ward
 * Reconsider the Validity of promotional material. Really what I mean here is making narrative trailers and trailers for audio stories valid.