Tardis:When do local rules prevail?

Fandom, the company on whose servers the Tardis Data Core is hosted, takes an interest in the running of the Wikis it hosts. This includes policy suggestions made by Fandom through Community Centra. However, Tardis has its own, complex set of policies, emerging organically from the unique needs of our community. This policy allows you to understand when Tardis policy trumps Fandom common-practices, and when it doesn't.

When Tardis local policy prevails
As a rule of thumb, it's more often the case that something which other Wikis permit might be forbidden on Tardis, whereas it's quite rare (though possible) for things that other prominent Wikis ban to be permitted on Tardis.

Against "suggested guidelines" for new features
A common case is when Fandom rolls out a new technical feature with fairly open-ended use suggestions, while Tardis already forbids things under whose umbrella the new feature seems to broadly fall. From time to time, Fandom creates products that come with their own "starter" rules. We often adopt those products early in their lifecycle, in order to help shape the future. But there can be a delay between when the product goes live, and when we here at Tardis are allowed to alter those generic rules. By way of example, the rules which Doctor Who mobile app users — but not desktop ones — saw upon the introduction of the 2016 Discussions module were at variance with our discussion policy. Local policy prevailed upon introduction of this module.

In short, we do not consider "suggested" rules provided by Fandom to be binding if they contradict established local policy, although they can be better than nothing as broad guidelines, should a very new feature not be covered at all by local policies. If the situation is especially confusing — usually because the product offers an experience not contemplated by current rules — the administrative staff will make an effort to give guidance as to which of our local rules are controlling, or to write new ones. Generally, though, it should be assumed that any new products will probably fall under some existing rule found on the wiki. It's your responsibility, even if you're mainly a mobile user, to read and follow our policies.

Note that other rules, like T:BOUND, T:POINT and T:NO WARS, may come into play, to ensure discussion takes place when major precedents are being contested. New decisions should be in line with current policy, unless it is current policy which is under discussion (always in the Forums). For more information, see Tardis:Who writes policy.

While all rules should ultimately be codified, preferably in a timely manner, precedent still holds in the absence of explicit policy. Such temporary "pseudo-policies" can trump guidelines in some cases. However, do remember that any rule which has not been written into these namespaces cannot be a blockable offence, as per Fandom's 2021 blocking policy.

Against "common practices" in other projects
It is not uncommon for new users to mistakenly believe that just because other websites they've edited do things one way, Tardis must be the same. This is inaccurate.

Tardis does things differently from many other Wikis, and it is no argument at all to defend oneself with the fact that one's actions would have been in-keeping with the policy of some other Wiki, however large or well-established. As covered at Tardis:We're Wikipedia's evil twin, for example, our manual of style, editing philosophy, and way of approaching the Doctor Who universe differs in key ways from Wikipedia's own.

This refers not just to other Wikis, but also to other resources on the Doctor Who universe. For example, most online discussion refers to the 1996 TV movie that introduced Paul McGann's version of the Doctor as "The TV Movie". We on Tardis, however, have a policy which demands that, if at all available, we stick with the title under which a story was originally released. As such, we call it Doctor Who (TV story); and it is not, of itself, meaningful to object that nobody else calls it that.

When we must obey Fandom's directives
The above refers to suggestions, or common practices from other communities, including Community Central: all those things would need to be discussed on Tardis to become rules here, as well. The present policy should not be construed to apply to cases where Fandom has explicitly stated that certain policies must be followed by all Wikis hosted on its servers. In those cases, Fandom's demands always prevail over local policies, should any disputes arise.

This includes Fandom's Terms of Uses and a few other meta-policies.