User:CzechOut/This wiki's scope

Want this information reduced to a simple list? Go here.

Defining the scope of the wiki — that is, telling people what we cover — is a vital first step in making our wiki truly useful to people. Without a clear sense of what stories will be discussed here — and which will not — readers and editors alike won't understand what we're trying to accomplish.

Background
The world of Doctor Who — otherwise known as the Doctor Who universe or DWU — is a very different place to that of Star Trek, Star Wars, Harry Potter, DC Comics, Marvel Comics or really any other franchise. The copyright holders to the DWU, the British Broadcasting Corporation, have deliberately refused to say which stories "count" and which don't. In general they've been wholly silent on defining a canon of any kind.

While this stance has undoubtedly been good for sales of stories — no author has ever been pushed out into the cold of non-canonical status — it makes the life of the encyclopedia editor and reader much more difficult. After all, if we don't take some sort of decisions, we'd end up believing that Joanna Lumley really was the thirteenth Doctor or that Dr. Who was a human who had built a machine called TARDIS.

At some level, every encyclopedia about this this franchise must make some usually arbitrary decisions about the scope of their product, or they'll find making forward progress quite difficult.

This document thus explains the decisions we've made.