Forum:Prefix simplification

Do you know how many prefixes we have on our wiki? 90. Nine-zero. And rising. In order to make sense of our article citation system, you have to wade through some seriously thick alphabet soup.

This whole prefixing "thing" came from early administrators' (well, okay, Freethinker1of1's) love of w:c:memoryalpha. It's all there in the early forum archives. But the thing is, MemAlpha is much simpler. They have seven prefixes, by my count: TOS, TAS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT and MOV. So there's no great barrier to understanding. Even newbies know within their first day of using the site what all the prefixes are.

And, yanno, back in 2005/6 when this system emerged, there were much fewer lines to worry about. More than MemAlpha deals with, but much less than today. Big Finish have created tons of new lines since 2006. We've got a thriving new series book line now; we've had the explosion of new comic lines, and — let's not forget — we've had three televised spin-offs since the prefixing system started.

I think we've reached the point of critical mass. Casual readers shouldn't be made to feel like they need a cheat sheet just to read an article.

Prefixes should be something that people can pick up almost intuitively. They really shouldn't have to go to a scorecard to figure them out.

Call this a last-minute "think about a way to make it simpler for the newbies that will be arriving once the new series start" moment. But we've got to simplify this mess.

What if we reduced all the prefixes to the bare minimum? What if we concentrated on medium rather than range? Now I realise that most of the people who respond to this thread are going to be long-time editors. So you're all used to the system we have now. But imagine you're someone who's discovered us because you just watched one of the brand new Matt Smith episodes a couple of weeks from now. Is the need to become familiar with 90 prefixes gonna retain your interest or hamper it? Even though I've done a lot to build the current system, I have to say that I think it's gonna turn you off.

If you're one of the thousands of people who come here every day just to read our articles, it's probably more than sufficient to know that a factoid derives from "a comic strip", "a book" or "a television episode". You don't need to know, if you're reading, say, Martha Jones, that the fact comes from a DWM strip versus a DWBIT strip versus an IDW strip. A comic is a comic is a comic. If you want greater details, you'd click on the name of the comic strip and quickly scan the infobox.

By site policy, MAs are not more authoritative than PDAs, and DWBIT stories aren't more valid than IHP ones. So why should we continue to make these trivial distinctions within the body of our articles?

I think we should consider carefully the advantages of going with something like this:

Fiction
 * PROS — any prose story — novel, novella, novelisation or short story from any range
 * COM — any comic strip from any range
 * TV — any TV story from any programme
 * AUD – any audio from any range

Non-fiction
 * REF — used as now
 * INFO — used as now
 * PCOM — used as now
 * DCOM — used as now
 * DOC — used as now
 * CON — used as now

And that's it.

Changeover is incredibly simple with a bot. The entire wiki could be converted in probably 72 hours. Thus "oh my God, this is an impossible task" is not a valid reason not to adopt this change.

However, you may have other good arguments for why I'm not thinking straight in this instance. If so — or if you actually agree with me, or have a counter-proposal — please put your comments below. 03:05: Tue 21 Aug 2012


 * i remember when i first started reading this site slightly over a year ago, i got super confused with the prefixes. even now i only feel comfortable with the most popular ones.  tbh, when i first started i didn't even know there was any official spin off media.  i think the simplification would help a lot, and will avoid much confusion for newer users.  i'm all for it.  Imamadmad  ☎  06:07, August 21, 2012 (UTC)


 * As one of those long time editors, I do quite like our quirky prefixing system. However I will admit having to check the list of prefixes when editing some articles. The annuals especially I find needlessly complicated. I think it's things like this and the 90 different prefixes is putting off new editors.


 * So I support this proposal, though I do have a few questions;


 * With this new system will WEB finally be shifted out of use in-universe articles as it's non-narrative (except for when websites are seen onscreen).


 * Also what of VG? We'll need to make it clear that ones that have a narrative are covered under the PROS prefix.


 * And BFX, CD extras don't really fit within the presented non-fiction prefixes presented here. I'd suggest AUDX so it's a broad coverage so we're not limited to CDs or producer as Big Finish release their stories/extras as downloads and the prefix can be used for any other producers of audio story. --Tangerineduel / talk 07:19, August 21, 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't edit much here, but I thought I'd throw my view in. I'm afraid I have to disagree with the proposal. At the moment, the system (while complicated) makes it clear what format each item is and whether it is canonical. By condensing these down into much larger groupings, we lose some of that disambiguation. Tangerineduel's comments above highlight this to me quite well - the system has evolved over time to give everything a proper group that it fits in with. By reducing the prefixes available, we'll likely have to shoehorn items into groups that they probably don;t belong in.


 * I'm also of this view. I think the imposition of a "cover everything" prefix for each format will confuse more people than it will help. The current system is better as it allows for easy identification of what range the source is from, and makes it easier for our readers, rather than them clicking on the source to find the information they're looking for.
 * This wiki is about getting things right, and as Eladkse says, we will most likely end up having to shoehorn items into groups they don't belong, as nothing is ever simple with Doctor Who, and we've already made it as simple as we're going to get it. --Revan\Talk 09:30, August 21, 2012 (UTC)


 * Could you please develop the point about "shoehorn[ing] items into groups they don't belong"? I'm not getting how it's "shoehorning" to put a comic strip under a COM prefix. It's not, in my view, shoehorning if you organise by medium instead of range.  And it seems to me that the present system is so overclassified that there are some points where we're just making prefixes up.  We're trying to make up a definition for the prefix PDA right now, for instance. And in the recent past we've tried to find prefixes for particular parts of the Iris Wildthyme prose.


 * See, to my mind, we've — and I definitely include myself in the "we" — not applied a consistent standard to the creation of prefixes. Sometimes it's about the range (CC), sometimes it's about the publication (DWM applies to both short stories and comics), and other times we've created a range where none exists (NSA).  On still other occasions, we don't really have a clear notion of what the prefix means at all (BFA is a total mess).  It's really the current system that shoehorns.  This new proposal was designed specifically to eliminate shoehorning.


 * If we prefix by medium, we're not only simplifying, we're organising along indisputable lines. I think if you're going to allege shoehorning, you're going to need to provide cases where a story's status as "prose", "comic", "audio", or "televised" is at all ambiguous.09:47: Tue 21 Aug 2012


 * I mostly agree with CzechOut. There's no real need to know which comic series a story comes from, just that it is a comic, as opposed to an audio story or novel. I would (possibly) consider splitting the prose one up, but the TV one definently needs to be split by series. If I want to see where a source comes from, opening up hundreds of them just to check if it's a Doctor Who or Torchwood or SJA episode is far too much work. I'd also consider splitting up the audio one, but only into TWA or DWA or BSA. All main Big Finish audios, plus CCs, and the Eighth and Fourth Doctor ones would all simply be DWA, but the BBC Torchwood ones would be TWA, and the Benny ones would be BSA, ones with Sarah Jane would be SJA, etc.  Tardis1963   talk  10:42, August 21, 2012 (UTC)
 * Why does it matter what series an episode comes from if all programmes have equal validity? Does it matter that a particular fact comes from DW as opposed to SJA? I can see why the medium matters, because if we cite a story with which the reader is unfamiliar, at least they'll be able to say, "Oh, it's an audio; no wonder I've never heard of it." But beyond that, I'm not sure I see the need for establishing that the fact comes from an SJA audio, or a TW radio drama.


 * What's the compelling reason for moving away from an acronym that parses upon casual inspection (I think most readers would assume AUD means "audio"]]) to something that is actually ambiguous (DWA means Doctor Who Adventures, and it would upsset our issue listings to have DWA as a prefix that doesn't indicate Adventures.) 12:03: Tue 21 Aug 2012


 * Nobody said anything about validity; this issue is, as said above, about making things easier for newbies. I agree the current system is unwieldy, and am in favor of simplification, but don't think we need to go to the other extreme. As the Manual of Style says, "Please consider that many of our readers will not necessarily know as much about Doctor Who as you." Most of the newbies will come from the television show, and many will not even know (at first) that The Sarah Jane Adventures and Torchwood exist. So, yes, simplify by medium, but keep the original television prefixes is my suggestion. Shambala108 ☎  16:18, August 21, 2012 (UTC)


 * I'd like DW, TW, SJA, KAC and K9TV not to be merged as some single television prefix. In an ideal world, I'd also at a minimum clearly divide Doctor Who spinoff series from "just Doctor Who" prose, audio, comics. I don't have too much issue in consolidating EDA, PDA, NSA and the problems brought up in Forum:New past Doctor stories: PDA? into one BBC Books thing, as they're not strictly speaking lines. It's just putting Torchwood novels and SJAN into that as well where I draw the line.


 * I'm gathering that WC and VG can remain as they are, though? -- Tybort (talk page) 18:36, August 21, 2012 (UTC)

[edit conflict]
 * Shambala, I'm not quite understanding how you agree with the basic logical underpinnings of this proposal, but then conclude by arguing for a bit of complication. I would think that the quote from the manual of style argues for the simplest system possible.  Everyone can get that TV means "a story you can watch on your TV". As you point out, not everyone will know that the spin-off programmes even exist.  Thus, for the sake of the newbies, it seems to make more sense to go TV: Title, than to include some prefixes, notably K9TV and KAC, that don't parse quite as clearly to newbies.  Also, it's a bit unsatisfactory to suggest that we would allow a broader range of TV prefixes than those in other media. This implies that television is a more "important" medium, which goes against one of the foundational principles of the wiki.  18:42: Tue 21 Aug 2012

[/edit conflict]


 * I will try to make myself more clear. The current system is complicated and confusing. The suggested system is simple, but it is also confusing. I've only been doing this for about a year, so I remember how overwhelming the Doctor Who universe is. I don't think the very simple method gives enough information to a newbie. If we can only choose the very complicated or the very simple (with no middle ground), I change my vote to keeping the status quo. 06:07, August 22, 2012 (UTC)


 * Tybort, your meaning is a bit unclear. Are you saying that you want to have a system where we keep the current television show prefixes, and then prepend those to letters suggesting a medium.  So: SJAC, SJAN, SJAA, DWA, DWC, DWN, and so forth?  18:46: Tue 21 Aug 2012


 * I understand the trouble with using DWA for Doctor Who audio stories and potentially DWN for all Doctor Who novels, but essentially, yes. -- -- Tybort (talk page) 18:48, August 21, 2012 (UTC)
 * It's not a potential problem. It's a Big Honkin' Problem. You can tell by the blue links that it wouldn't work to have a  convention.  All the potential acronyms are genuinely already taken.  They all have at least one, but often multiple, meanings.  DWA is obviously Doctor Who Adventures, but there's an argument for Doctor Who Annual, too.  Doctor Who Audio doesn't even come close to being a natural meaning for the prefix DWA.  DWC means Doctor Who Classics.  I'm not about to change every single issue of Doctor Who Adventures, Doctor Who Classics and Doctor Who Classic Comics just to make way for DW Audio.


 * Since you can't do it with any of the DWX things, it wouldn't make sense to do it for any of the spin off material either. Which means that, as a matter of technical practicality the best, most easily comprehensible course of action is to go to prefixes that simply identify the medium, period.


 * IF you're okay with changing the prefixes, the change should be to something better and simpler — something that makes sense without having to go to a help page. COM and AUD and TV make sense inline.  There is literally no user on the site, regardless of their familiarity with the DWU, who will misunderstand what TV and AUD and COM mean.  DWA and DWC are not nearly so universally and immediately understood.  00:41: Wed 22 Aug 2012


 * I think we do need to go to the other extreme, Shambala108, because if we do something less we'll be compromising so much so we'll get another iteration of what we already have.
 * I also disagree that many of our new readers and editors have come from TV. Doctor Who is on TV for 6-12 weeks of the year, it's greatly, hugely outweighed by the other mediums which produce stories for the DWU. It is also just as possible that new readers/editors may not know the full extent of the DWU having come here via Torchwood, SJA or Bernice Summerfield.


 * If for sake of argument we don't merge DW/TW/SJA/KAC/K9TV the next question is why and why don't we have individual prefixes for the other mediums / series? If we did half-hearted merge along these lines it smacks of us favouriting one line over another.


 * We are all agreed and have been for some time that all the stories are as valid as one another then why separate them as we have done so? Is it not better to be able to look at a citation like this COM: Battle for the Moon and know instantly that's a comic whilst AUD: The Sound of Fear is an audio? As it is the citation for the former would be DAN (a Dalek annual) and the latter IW neither of which is particularly enlightening and both you would need to click through to the prefix to discover more. People also would more likely click through to the story to discover more than the prefix, and as I've said above the infobox on all stories contains information that is currently wrapped into some (though not all) the prefixes. --Tangerineduel / talk 10:14, August 22, 2012 (UTC)


 * I know that there's hundreds of books and they have a dedicated fandom, but it seems ridiculous that they've had more (if any!) mainstream attention than the 80-odd most recent episodes of the shows.


 * It is favouritism to only defend those, I'm sure. In an ideal world, I don't want to merge anything outside of maybe lumping "everything Doctor Who BBC Books" together, as Past Doctor Adventures, New Series Adventures and so forth don't seem to be actual names of lines like Virgin New Adventures. But as there's 90 prefixes, it's not really feasible to just merge a couple.


 * I'll concede to simplifying it down to PROS, COM (or COMIC to avoid conflicts with the commentary prefixes), AUD and TV. I won't completely like it, but I can't think of any proper alternatives.


 * I'm gathering that special cases of DW (Meanwhile in the TARDIS, the Prequels, Night and the Doctor) would be TV, Are we expanding TV to "anything moving picture" such as webcasts and the semi-licensed videos?


 * Unless there's a discussion I missed with video games as sources, I assume we can keep VG as well? -- Tybort (talk page) 16:43, August 22, 2012 (UTC)

I'd like to make a suggestion, regardless of any decisions made about prefixes, which could make the system a little clearer to readers without having to open any more pages. By using a template that surrounds prefixes in a span tag, we can add a sentence which explains the group to the user when they hover over it. Some of you probably know how this works already; but for those who don't, hover over this for an example: TV. For those who are not quite sure about what an abbreviation means, they can find out in a few seconds without changing page.

Personally, I really don't see the point in simplifying the prefixes, especially since it would probably cause more problems than it would solve as people would have to read around the Wiki to a greater extent in order to find out whether a reference was made in, for instance, in a Missing Adventure or a Past Doctor Adventure. For what it's worth, I'm against it. GusF ☎  20:10, August 22, 2012 (UTC)

I'm 100% with Gus on this one. But Eladkse's suggestion does seem like a perfect compremise. --Revan\Talk 21:23, August 22, 2012 (UTC)


 * I very strongly agree with simplifying prose and comics, and some audios. But not TV - a user may not watch, eg, SJA. If they see (TV: Death of the Doctor), they're gonna think that there's a new Doctor Who TV episode out.


 * I quite like the hover over idea though. Is there any way to keep the same word, but change the hover over? You could have 'AUD', but then the hover over would read 'Big Finish', 'Sarah Jane Adventures', 'The Lost Stories', 'Torchwood' etc.  Tardis1963   talk  10:28, August 23, 2012 (UTC)


 * Possible, but not practical. To do so would render this entire conversation as pointless, as we would still need the old categories anyway in order to label them. The hover idea will only really work if a) we keep the current system, or b) we move to the proposed system.


 * (Edit) It could work as Tardis1963 suggests if we use some semantics. We would need to call some sort of 'type' or 'series' semantic from each article, then use that to generate the hover. I've made something pretty similar in my sandbox recently. Take a look here.
 * The only problem with the template based system is of course implementation, not creation. It's easy to create this template, and in fact we've tried something similar in the past.  The problem is retrofitting it to existing cases. Because people have done a variety of things with their citations, we may never get complete, 100% adoption of the template.


 * But we can probably expect something over 85% of instances will use the template — higher if my bot programming successfully predicts more unusual cases.


 * In any event, this change will eventually come with a new template that not only incorporated Eladkse's idea, but auto-italicisation and proper dab truncation (Castrovalva (TV story) --> Castrovalva) at the same time, thereby improving overall compliance with the manual of style.


 * Also, I think people are wrongly thinking it's "bad" that newbies might have to click on a story name to see where, specifically, the story came from. That's good.  That means we're keeping people here a little bit longer.  We want that.  The greater our pageviews, the more we improve a number of popularity metrics.  And, yanno, we're not forcing people to go on some kinda treasure hunt here.  We're just adding one click to look at an infobox.  I'd argue that on  many of these prefixes, they were having to click anyway in order to decode the prefix.  So really, we're just swapping the click target, not actually adding a click.  We may even be decreasing click throughs in some instances, since people might be curious what PHS means, but will probably not think twice about clicking on COM (or COMIC).


 * To answer Tybort above, VG will probably be supplanted by GAME, and we'll probably need to invent something like HOMEVID for the stuff now prefixed with RP and BBV, as well as the Meanwhile in the TARDIS and Night and the Doctor stuff. 16:18: Thu 23 Aug 2012


 * Okay, I've kicked the tires on Eladkse's template-with-semantics notion and I think it needs to be made clear that such a notion depends on a lot of work on my part. I'd have to tag every single story page with a little bit of code. And just adding it with a bot isn't going to be enough.  I'd have to integrate it in such a way that it was likely that people would remember to add it to new pages. Maybe, for instance, I'd co-opt the  variable that exists in all infoboxes.


 * It's not impossible, but it is time-consuming and will require testing. Getting a cool hover is therefore a discussion for another thread.  We're putting the cart before the horse a bit by suggesting templates for a prefix system that isn't even installed yet.  Down the road, something like the "Eladkse gambit" is possible.  But when Revanvolatrelundar says of Eladkse's plan, "Great, that's a good compromise", I feel compelled to be honest and say, "No, this thread isn't actually offering that compromise".  I could lie and say, "Yes, definitely, i'm going to incorporate Elkadse's plan by 15 September 2012" — but I'm not going to do that.  There will definitely be a period of time where there won't be a mouseover on the prefix.  It'll be PROS and that's it for an unspecified period of time.


 * Of course, I probably will instal the wherewithal to have something very close to the "Eladkse gambit". But I'm not about to do all the work for that unless this motion passes.  So: one step at a time.  What we have on the table right now is the question of whether or not to change the range-based prefix system to the medium-based system. 17:17: Thu 23 Aug 2012


 * Okay, I take back what I said on the prequels. It seems to have nothing to do with the home video "special cases". It turns out the only uses of DW for them were on images that I added and Forum:Timeline - Eleventh Doctor, which I started off. Everywhere else it's WC. They're web broadcasts, though they're clearly produced by the same BBC Wales production team as the television series, which I'm sure CzechOut brought up elsewhere. That must have been what confused me.


 * I'm abstaining on whether to do this for now, but if we do go through with it, if we are continuing the use of WC and WEB, maybe we should turn them into WEBCAST (plus a few online PROS-es) and WEBSITE. That's not too long for a prefix, is it? -- Tybort (talk page) 17:40, August 23, 2012 (UTC)


 * For the record, I really don't like "PROS". I think 3 letters work best, so I'd go for either a 3 letter abbreviations - "PRS", "PSE", or the first 3 letters - "PRO". I like "PRS", "CMC" and "AUD" the best for prose, comics and audio stories.  Tardis1963   talk  07:34, August 25, 2012 (UTC)


 * Not sure either way about how to approach a prose prefix, but CMC definitely seems like a better idea than COM, which in my opinion could just as easily be confused with "commentary". After all, if there wasn't PCOM, wouldn't the DVD commentaries likely have been called COM? -- Tybort (talk page) 17:17, August 25, 2012 (UTC)


 * Can we take it that Tardis1963 and Tybort are in support of the concept of simplifying the prefixes?
 * At the thread's outset CzechOut did say "something like this", the proposition at the start doesn't state it's going to be exactly as shown here.
 * I think we can develop the prefixes, but essentially what we're looking to do is get rid all the prefixes we have and get down to 6 or so for stories and 6 or so for non-fic ones. --Tangerineduel / talk 14:30, August 28, 2012 (UTC)


 * By my count there are 4 in favor of and 5 against (or 3 in favor of, 5 against, and 1 abstaining from) the proposal. Once again, and for the last time, I will state that I don't think reacting to one extreme by going to the other extreme is helpful. Some simplification is necessary, to be sure, but too much simplification is just as confusing as too much complexity. Shambala108 ☎  17:22, August 28, 2012 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I'm abstaining the "six or so in-universe prefixes" decisions. I support the concept "having much less than 90 prefixes", but I'm not 100% behind that specific proposal, but at the same time, I don't know what alternatives ther are. What I'd be happy with is prefixes for Doctor Who and each spinoff in each medium (i.e. consolidate Doctor Who prose with the prefix NA, EDA, PDA, ST, VD, NSA, DWF, DWM, DWAN, DWS, DWY, TDL, QR and BE into one prefix, but not all prose ever), but as pointed out above, DWA, DWC and so forth are pre-existing acronyms. If the Doctor Who universe had a massive "Doctor Who" on the various covers of every story, we wouldn't have this problem. But we don't. There's tons of spinoff series that barely or infrequently feature the Doctor. -- Tybort (talk page) 18:20, August 28, 2012 (UTC)