User:Najawin/Sandbox 1

So it seems that we're waiting on opening posts for topics in the opening forums. As such, I'm taking the liberty to write up those that I'm somewhat acquainted with.

=Non-narrative Fiction: WIP=

Alright. So. I'm going to be approaching this in a bit of a weird direction, attempting to build a historical case for a re-examination of this rule, where a lot of the history, uh, not precisely available to us because it's in the deleted forums. With that said I think most of the relevant history takes place before the switch, so we can get the work done.

T:VS. The four little rules. At the end of the day I think no rule has caused more controversy than rule 1. Perhaps there's some disagreement as to precise implementations of rules 2-4, a la primary vs secondary rights holders, the, uh, arcbeatle stuff, or our recent rule 4 discussion. But no other rule, to my knowledge, has had people fundamentally question the very necessity of its existence. There are at least three proposals in these forums that touch on it, more, depending on how you count. It's a mess. And its history is just as messy.

The earliest relevant discussion is the original 2005 creation of the canon policy, which specifically disallowed the FASA roleplaying game (among others) (though this was because they "contain histories and other information which conflicts with the television and prose stories"), as well as websites, unless sourced from a valid source (this policy doesn't seem to have considered the idea of in-universe websites given the phrasing) and stated that
 * The relevance of the Doctor Who Technical Manual, The Terrestrial Guide, The Doctor Who Monster Book and similar items and their suitability for use in creating and contributing to articles in the TARDIS Index File is unclear at this time, and up for discussion.

This was a proposed draft, (as stated at Forum:Archives of the original Panopticon, and discussion began at the original inclusion debates, but there simply was never discussion of this section. User:Boblipton brings it up 6 years later to subtly change the wording, and that's it. (Someone else brings up discussion about out of universe reference works, but this too is ignored.)

A small but interesting side note takes place in 2008 when someone asks about Search for the Doctor and it's clear that at this point nonlinear fiction isn't considered "non canon".

In June of 2010, Forum:We need a policy on videogames attempts to nail down specific policies on games, noting that at this time Attack of the Graske is still canon, with User:CzechOut arguing that the policy at the time doesn't clearly explain why the FASA games aren't canon. There isn't clear consensus by the end of this discussion a year later, though it's important to note that a final postscript discussion includes the observation by User:Victory93 that the FASA game manuals aren't narrative, but the games are.

In March of 2011 User:Tangerineduel brings up the issue of the three works mentioned as being "unclear" in the canon policy since its very invention. Czech's response:
 * They're unclear because they contain material which could potentially be used on in-universe articles, but probably shouldn't be. That is, they contain information about, for example, the technical specs of K9 or the operation of the TARDIS, or details about the sonic screwdriver — a substantial amount of which has never been confirmed in any narrative. They also contain, in the case of The Terrestrial Index, the author's opinion as to the narrative history of the DWU, in much the same way that AHistory or The Discontinuity Guide will throw out pearls of "wisdom" about how certain in-universe things fit together. All these reference books are one step removed from the source material, the episodes themselves, and therefore make for potentially dangerous resources for in-universe articles. It's fine if you want to include information from these sorts of books in a behind-the-scenes section or on a story page. But I can't see the rationale for including the Technical Manual 's ideas of what makes the sonic screwdriver tick in the main body of sonic screwdriver. Primacy must be given to narrative works on in-universe pages.

This is stated as the official line by Tangerine in 2011, that you need narrative sources.

In early 2012 discussion about another video game commences. (This one is interesting for a variety of reasons, many parts of it have aged very poorly.) Interestingly, Czech insists that RPGs were thrown out years prior, and while this is true, at the time T:CANON stated it was because they conflicted with the tv show or prose works. User:Tybort points this out, and they discuss whether RPGs should be covered generally. Search for the Doctor is discussed again, and there's disagreement as to whether or not it's similar. Tangerine makes the following comment:
 * I believe the origin of the FASA ban was that kinda like other in-universe non-narrative reference books it was believed that the FASA stuff was made up just so there'd be enough content for the FASA game.

(I note that I've not been able to find evidence for this in my dive through the forums, but it could well be true that this was the concern. But it's interesting to see how the slow marriage of non narrative in universe fiction and non linear storytelling came to pass in these discussions.) The next two comments from Czech are illuminating as well, and while they're too long to replicate in full, some choice bits:
 * To me, it's more that it's a lack of consistent narrative. [...] What I'm saying is that RPGs encourage and allow for fanfic, which is clearly not allowed. [...] More than that, you don't have to choose the missions (called rather stupidly "interventions") in a particular order, by and large. Which means for you, the game may progress from intervention a, to intervention d, to invervention c. For someone else, it might go in alphabetical order. Thus your "plot" is scrambled. I think that to include a particular story, i must be a story that progresses in the same way for everyone experiencing it.
 * The real reason for the ban must surely be that RPGs are internally unstable narratives. They don't come out the same each time you play them. So anything which happens differently each time you play it shouldn't be considered a part of our tardis.wikia.com canon, because we don't know which outcome to go with. This would mean things like the DYD and FYF books would also be slapped with a notdwu warning. I don't see anything wrong with saying: Only those narratives with a consistent narrative, experienced in the same way for all those that consume that narrative, may be considered a valid source for the writing of articles.

Eventually the discussion closed without clear resolution on larger policy concerns, though even the staunchest defender of the game sort of accepted that deeming the particular game non canon wouldn't be awful.

It gets a little weird here, because we need to look at a completely random thread that seems to have nothing to do with our discussion. Forum:Inclusion debate: Death Comes to Time takes place beginning in May of 2012, that involves the following snippet from Czech:
 * For this reason, a process — which, incidentally, I did not personally invent — emerged whereby we occasionally examine a story or range to see whether it should be considered a valid source for the writing of in-universe articles. If there's evidence that the creators/copyright holders did not intend for the story to be a part of the DWU, or if there's a question about the story's legal status, we exclude it. Even though, again, I'm not the author of this process, I do approve of it. We have to have some mechanism for defining the wiki's scope, or we'd have no defense against fan fiction, obvious parody, and things which are explicitly meant by the author and/or copyright holder to be viewed as extra-continuous. [Emphasis my own]

Here we see two of the four rules in T:VS. Rule 1 and 3 being absent, both of which are perhaps non-obvious, and 1 is uniquely controversial. And, indeed, the first version of T:VS is written the next day. User:Josiah Rowe voices his approval for this rewrite of the canon system. (As he should, the old canon system was a mess.) Over the next two days the policy construction continues, first in the form of the 3 little rules and then the 4 little rules, adding in Rule 1 as the final rule. However, there's no discussion in said forum thread about Rule 1, the only discussion taking place being around a semi-narrative approach to validity, which is, again, very funny in hindsight.

In October of 2012 Forum:Decide Your Destiny and Find Your Fate are NOTDWU from here on out shifted the branching path stories to being not valid based on Rule 1 on the discussion of Czech and Tangerine alone, and that's the final relevant thread in the old panopticon to the issue of Rule 1.

Most everything else that could be relevant is in the deleted forums, but there are some bits of interest at Tardis talk:Valid sources, namely, Tardis talk:Valid sources and Tardis talk:Valid sources.

Quite frankly, I don't think that User:Vultraz Nuva's concerns were ever adequately addressed. Indeed, we have a working disproof of Czech's supposed skepticism at Talk:The Monster Vault, where a single user who had bought the work explained why it was valid based on examples from the text. And this example was potentially invalid even given the rules as they currently exist.

=IU DAB Terms: WIP=

=T:BOUND Reform: WIP=

=T:NAVBOX: WIP=

=Conflict of Interest Rules: WIP=

=Quickstart Guides: WIP=

=Validity: Biographies of Authors: WIP=

=Invalidity: Curse of Fatal Death: WIP=