Board Thread:Inclusion debates/@comment-1272640-20161222064850/@comment-188432-20161228052035

Guys, I treasure community discussions. No one around here has put more hours into maintaining the forums and making sure they are as accessible as possible to future users.

I've seen just about every discussion this wiki has ever held.

So I feel qualified to say that they only really work when people are genuinely interested in doing research and factfinding to underpin the arguments. After seeing it seriously alleged that an obvious parody like Web of Caves is a valid source by DENCH-and-PALMER, and then having that assertion instantly and uncritically seconded by Pluto2 -- the two users that are primary to this one as well -- it's clear to me that factfinding isn't a massive part of this thread.

In that related debate, there are claims that DWM 285 says Caves is not a spoof. Those claims are then seconded with a single word. Yet when you actually look at the magazine, it does nothing to deter the notion of Caves as a parody. And Gatiss himself only confirms that Caves is a parody.

So if an offshoot of this conversation can so easily be demonstrated to be false, how can we trust anything here? Moreover there's just too much going on in this thread from which to draw conclusions that could actually be turned into something that could be administered. This isn't a practical thread.

It's mostly people saying,
 * "I think this should be valid, do you?"
 * "Sure, why not."

with some
 * "I don't understand why this thing is the way it is."

thrown in for additional confusion.

Beyond that, what you're doing by starting so many of these threads so closely together is creating a lot of work for admin over a short period of time.

I think I can speak for all admin when I say that what we thought we were going to get for Christmas was, finally, another episode of Doctor Who. Instead, we've gotten that -- and a ton of forum threads to read. And those threads are about relatively minor things, with which we may have already dealt in the past. Worse, we can't even trust that the "new" pitch for inclusion will be based on any solid facts.

Our priority as a community should be entirely elsewhere.

See, we've got to look at things mainly through the lens of the average reader of the site. What they care about right now is The Return of Doctor Mysterio. These inclusion debates about these "random stories" are not only exhausting our administrative staff, they're distracting us from doing work on the wiki that would attract and retain our first bunch of new users in a year.

So I hope you will understand I'm not being mean, but looking out for the bigger interests of the wiki, when I say that I'm closing this thread and denying any motions made within it. I'm also asking Pluto2 and DENCH-and-PALMER specifically and publicly -- to please stop creating inclusion threads.