Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-9435571-20140927221308/@comment-188432-20141007011616

OttselSpy25 wrote: Since we're on the topic of people listed as companions who shouldn't be, what's up with Jackie Tyler? I recall Czech once telling someone that she's listed as a Tenth Doctor companion because "I want her to be." You recall quite wrongly. The question of "companiondom" has always flummoxed Doctor Who fandom. We at Tardis are no more immune to that than any other fan outlet. Since we have never been able to come to a consensus, as even this thread — much less earlier ones — quite obviously shows, there is little point in re-litigating it every year. It always ends up the same way: this editor believes person X is a companion, while person Y obviously isn't. Another editor believes just the opposite. So there's never agreement, only argument. And it's an argument that has no real impact on the wiki. See, companion status matters only to two things: the navbox at the bottom of the page, and the categories in which the page is placed.

Thus to save the wiki bother over a truly minor matter and to help get our editors usefully working again, we have long observed that the community consensus on the matter of "who counts as a companion" is that there is no consensus. That being the case, the admin lock the navboxes in order to prevent edit warring between users, and then take on the responsibility of making a lot of arbitrary decisions.

In other words, "no consensus" means the matter is thrown back to admin, who grudgingly wade into these murky waters on an annual basis. Being reluctantly forced to look at companion navboxes from time to time is not at all the same as saying Jackie counts "cause I want her to'. Neither I nor any admin here wants anything when it comes to companion status — other than the whole question to just go away.

Guys, when this thread was about the specific question of Courtney, I was happy to let it continue. But in the past day, I've begun to sense a shift back into familiar ground. And I have to say that we're not going to re-open this forum thread, that forum thread, and this other forum thread.

Please keep this conversation to Courtney Woods only. Remember, unless you have something actually, materially new to offer to a discussion that's been tried before, you are bound to accept the judgement of past discussions.

(But please, if you do have something new — really, really new — to offer on the subject of finding a way to define who counts as a companion, do start a new thread. Read the forum discussions referenced above. Ponder them. And if you see a trick we've actually missed, tell us!)