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. (Hey, spoilers are down in the Quickstart guide section. Avoid that if you want to avoid spoilers.)

=T:BOUND Reform: Ready=

Opening Post
So for quite some time it has been the semiofficial stance of this wiki that T:BOUND implies some additional policy, something vaguely related to people "being bound by the way we currently do things". This informal broadening of the policy has never been precisely fleshed out, but has been alluded to quite a few times in admin decisions, including those that have had substantial discussion on the very nature of "community consensus" or T:BOUND itself. See, for instance, User talk:Shambala108 and Talk:Hugh Grant.

It's been suggested in the past that our rules can be difficult for new users to learn, and this is certainly the case. But having a rule that simply isn't written down and only exists due to self justification, the ultimate bootstrap paradox of a rule, makes this situation even more frustrating for new editors. It's important that we codify this policy formally into our rules in order to make things more accessible for new users. As stated at Tardis talk:You are bound by current policy, it's not immediately obvious that a forum thread is needed for this, but I think it's reasonable to have one in order to hammer out the precise wording.

Two years ago it was stated that


 * it makes sense to have a policy that says "even if the current setup isn't codified by a specific policy, you shouldn't, on a whim, try and implement a change that would have ramifications on thousands of pages without starting a discussion".

And I think this is the correct approach to take. In the main body of the rule, that is the section with three paragraphs, I suggest that we add a fourth, between what is currently the second and third paragraphs. The current wording I'm floating is the following:


 * As a corollary, "policy" doesn't just apply to those decisions that have been officially enshrined through discussion, but also refers to operating procedures that apply to multiple pages over large periods of time with the express knowledge of admins, even if these procedures technically contradict the results of a previous forum decision. Do not make large scale changes to the wiki without opening a discussion about these changes first.

But obviously the purpose of this thread is to workshop the wording. With that said, given the nuances of the issue, I would like to bring up another option. Separating this policy from T:BOUND entirely. I'm not sure this is the right path forward, and historically it's not what we've done. But it's certainly an option I think we should consider in this thread.

Discussion
=T:NAVBOX: Ready=

Opening Post
Alright, so over the past few years we've run into a few problems with navbox policies, or, really, the lack thereof. It's nothing particularly major, but I'd rather that we figure something out before massive problems are created, rather than after. I tried to look into other wikis to see if they had policies we could base our rules off of - my understanding is that much of our framework is derived from Memory Alpha's, iirc. All of the big wikis didn't seem to have any concrete policies, nor did the Mario wiki, Zelda, bulbapedia or tfwiki. (I'm just going to speculate here, but I think the reason other large wikis don't have the issue is the more simplified rights situations, combined with the relatively simple levels of fictionality each of them have to deal with in comparison to us.)

Wikipedia kinda does? They're essays, not official policies. I don't know if they're taken particularly seriously in the wiki editing sphere, but this is what I could find.
 * 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Navigation_template
 * 2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:A_navbox_on_every_page
 * 3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Not_everything_needs_a_navbox
 * 4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Avoid_template_creep

Now, obviously T:EVIL TWIN, even allowing for the fact that these aren't official policies, but this at least gives us a place to start. Before we do that, what precisely is the problem?

Some of the relevant history can be found at Talk:Scarlett Johansson and Template talk:Faction Paradox members, but the basic summary is that there has been disagreement as to whether an in universe connection is needed to place entities in the relevant navbox, such as Scarlett Johansson in the Marvel Comics navbox, given that the only story in which she's mentioned doesn't indicate her connection to Marvel. (This is true with Captain Marvel as well, lest you think it only applies to cast/crew.)

A related issue is that given that in DWU spinoffs, or even mainline BBC stories there's often thinly veiled versions of other characters. Do we put Astrolabus in ? If we create a navbox for The Master do we include Stream (The Hollows of Time) or The Man with the rosette? has a wild amount of speculation.

We don't have any clear precedent for this. And, let's be frank, I think there's good reason to argue either position.

So let's read through the essays and see if we can come to any sort of ground rules here.


 * 1) Choice selections from Essay 1.
 * 2) Ask yourself, does this help the reader in reading up on related topics? Take any two articles in the template. Would a reader really want to go from A to B?
 * 3) They should be kept small in size as a large template has limited navigation value. For navigating among many articles, consider [splitting] them into multiple, smaller templates on each sub-topic.
 * 4) If the articles are not established as related by reliable sources in the actual articles, then it is probably not a good idea to interlink them.
 * 5) Essay 2.
 * 6) A navbox serves the function of a see also section, but does so more effectively by implying a one-for-one relationship with the other members of the set. More articles can be listed in a navbox. While a "see also" section cannot be practical in listing more than a handful of the most relevant articles, a navbox can list dozens of related articles that can be subdivided into their own sections.
 * 7) The typical navbox has and should have around 10–100 articles listed, though there is no blanket guideline on this number, and there are plenty of exceptions either above or below this range.
 * 8) [Don't create navboxes like] a listing of articles for which there is no reasonable theoretical limit to the numbers of articles that can be included. Some examples are a list of people who are notable for the same reason but otherwise have no connections.
 * 9) Essay 3
 * 10) A good, but not set-in-stone rule to follow is the "rule of five": are there presently at least five articles (not counting the primary article) on which your navbox will be used?
 * 11) One indicator of usefulness is if an editor would otherwise be inclined to link many of these articles in the "See also" sections of the articles.
 * 12) Finally, keep overlap in mind. [If a potential navbox is a proper subset of another, just don't create it.]

Essay 4 is mainly just trying to explain how to reduce overcluttered navboxes, and we might need to discuss that, but, honestly, I don't think we do at this point. (If you want to, go off.)

I'm not sure that 1.3 is something we should adopt, but it's referenced as directly related to our discussion here. I think much of the rest is common sense, and is a set of standards we've largely informally adopted. Let's discuss the specific ways we could summarize these and formalize a policy for this wiki.

A: Treat navboxes as a "see also" (the specific context in which we interpret this is to be discussed in this thread). B: Require six other related articles (five + the article in question) in order to create a navbox. (Up for discussion as to the exact number, as we don't really use "see also" sections.) C: Make sure that there's some reasonable connection between the things in the navbox. It becomes a candidate for deletion if people think the criteria is too broad. D: Try to keep the number of entries in a single navbox below 100, splitting into smaller navboxes if it gets above that. E: Either don't create templates that are subsumed by others, or do what does, where the larger template will effectively link to the smaller template. (Obviously this can use work as I'm not sure this is optimal.) F: Maybe put a cap on the number of navboxes on a page if y'all want to do that.

I think the clear places where there's room for discussion and improvement are A, B, and E. B and E are self explanatory, but A gets to the heart of the disagreements that have previously existed. Do we interpret "see also" based on the context of an out of universe observer coming across the page, or someone who is interacting with page as it describes the in universe character? If the former, it seems we need them to be a relatively well informed observer in order for them to be aware of all the various navbox that could apply. EG: Marvel Comics on the Fourth Doctor's page. Alternatively, we could think of how a well observer would react to finding the linked pages on the navbox, and think of the navboxes as related bundles of concepts first and foremost. (As an example of the distinction, it's difficult to avoid the conclusion that Jim Sheldrake is an Alan Moore expy when you read stories about him. However, nobody looking at a "DC comics" navbox would understand this, whereas the Fourth Doctor's connection to Marvel Comics is non obvious both from a cursory glance through his page (though a very detailed one will show this) as well as being on, say, Iron Man.)

If it's instead about in-universe connections between these things, is this specifically using our standards for writing articles? Or are we allowing "speculation", such as conflating Astrolabus/Auteur, etc. What's the standard here?

I'm not sure. Currently we seem to be applying an "in universe with speculation" standard, which, hey, we might want to continue. But at the very least it's best to make sure that we've written this up somewhere that new users aren't confused when they start trying to write navboxes. And I think there's a real possibility that we might decide that there's a better path forward.

Finally, and by no means least importantly, do we apply these rules to navigational sidebars as well? Do we modify them in any way? Najawin ☎  01:58, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Discussion
=Conflict of Interest Rules: Ready=

Opening Post
Look, I'll be honest, this issue is a headache, and I'm not proud of my behavior in what led to the discussion of reframing our conflict of interest rules. (I'm sure other people might not care, and User:Shambala108 has assured me it's not a big deal, but I'm really not comfortable and don't wish to recount it.) If someone really cares to look, it's all available through the edit history at Russell McGee, my talk page, Shambala's and User:OncomingStorm12th's.

The tl;dr is that an author was editing his own page, and after it was pointed out to him that this was against the rules, his wife did so for him, both first adapting a Goodreads bio written by the author, and then later using a new bio that was written by a frequent collaborator of his, effectively trying to use the page for self promotion. (Quite frankly, I think the page is still too florid on his charity anthology work + schooling, but w/e.)

Now, look, obviously most authors aren't out here doing this. But it's an edge case in the rules that we might want to clean up. I don't have a super clear policy proposal to start the thread with, there's a variety of directions this can go. Maybe we don't need to fix this! But at the very least I think it's worth talking about.

The most obvious question is "how close is too close?" Like, sure, TBotP is down on my list (though with Nate's vagueposting that might change...), but I'm probably still going to be the one who writes the summary of Nate's short stories. Is that forbidden? By the very nature of who they are, there are some DWU authors whose stories might never get covered if we apply this policy a little too broadly. (So, for instance, I think "acquaintances" is instantly disqualified as a metric. Simply knowing a person does not disqualify you from writing about them.) Maybe no policy is workable. But I think we can at least try to figure it out. Najawin ☎  05:30, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Discussion
=Quickstart Guides: Ready= Please title this post something like [SPOILER: The start of RtD2] Quickstart Guides

Opening Post
For the spoiler averse, so long as you're caught up on the BBC press releases for the RtD2 era, you know, the really obvious stuff, nothing in my post should be an issue. I'd like to limit the scope of spoiler discussion in this post to the current (as of posting) BBC press releases for the show's cast and crew, so nobody is surprised.

Moving on.

The basic premise behind this post is that while I was thinking about how to update the wiki for the 60th and beyond, I realized pretty quickly that there were going to be a lot of returning viewers who hadn't seen the show in some years. Either since Tennant1, or Smith, or just fell out somewhere in Capaldi or Whittaker because it wasn't on constantly. I suspect that the 60th and S14 with Gatwa will be a soft reset, minimizing the need to watch what people have missed, but it would behoove us to make the show as accessible as we can for returning viewers. And, let's face it, the show can be intimidating for new viewers as well. (Even in the new series we're on S14. That's not something most genre shows get to. If people start thinking about Classic Who as well... They're pretty likely to be put off and just not start.)

Especially with the Disney+ move there's going to be more eyes on the show and the wiki than ever, so I think making sure that there's a clean way to onboard new viewers is imperative. (I also think that cleaning up our policies is pretty important, for the same reason. :P) As the wiki, we're one of the first places new viewers will go in order to look up information for the series, especially given FANDOM's SEO. We're in a unique position to write up introductions to various parts of the franchise, likely better than anyone else but the BBC.

What do we write, where do we put it, how do we write it?
All of these, are, of course, wildly up for discussion. But I'd like to begin with noting that whatever else is decided I think there should be a link to the Quickstart guides on our mainpage for at least the next two years. As stated, there will be many new and returning viewers, and providing them with a prominent way to slot into the current story with minimal disruption will be incredibly helpful.

Next up, and I expect this to have some level of discussion, I don't think editing the public facing version of the guides should be open to everyone. The admins and the regular editors aren't on all of the time, we can't revert vandalism constantly, and even those of us who do revert vandalism when it happens, well, a determined vandal will keep doing it, especially on our most public pages. Admins can't be on constantly to ban vandals. So however the technical issues are sorted out, I think that the public facing versions of these pages should be only editable by admins or however we define the namespaceprotection. (I absolutely do not trust "autoconfirmed users" as a protection level. I've seen far too many vandals have 4 day old accounts and edit pages that are supposed to be protected.)

I think this should be done with a new section in the Theory namespace, similar to Timelines or Discontinuity, the namespace was designed for essays, after all, but lock every page involved. Lock the index for Quickstart guides (which would be linked to both on the main page and on the theory index). Lock each individual guide. Have sandbox versions somewhere (perhaps also linked on the theory index page - so it's Timelines, Discontinuity, Quickstart, Quickstart Sandbox), and when you want to push a change to the public facing version version of the guide you talk to an admin. If you want to make a new guide you go through the same process.

Now, in what style do we write these guides? What might a potential guide look like? I think an answer to this has to be more of an art than a science. For instance, a "bare minimum" guide for the new series might explain the basic premise of the show and give you jumping on points, Rose, Eleventh Hour, Pilot, Woman Who Fell to Earth. I might suggest that a "Crashcourse" guide would explain the basics some behind the scenes issues, like actors and show runners changing, noting that occurring when it happens, and then giving plot descriptions for the various seasons along with highlighting important / well received episodes from each seasons for understanding the overall show. (EG: You could theoretically suggest they watch Rose, Dalek, Empty Child/Doctor Dances, Bad Wolf, Parting of the Ways for S1. Cuts out some stuff, but if they also read a summary explaining the plot points they missed they'll get the gist.) I might also suggest a "background information" guide, which basically just summarizes the entire plot that you might need to know up until a specific plotline. (My guess is that this will be most applicable to audios.)

Obviously this will work itself out through judicious application of informal consensus, but candidates for guides are perhaps tweaking Nate's wonderful FP guides, or guides to Big Finish - I know people that are interested in certain storylines (Divergent Universe, for instance) but are intimidated by the sheer amount of content that exists prior to it that they're not sure if they need to listen to first. We probably have some of the only people on earth who have read the Cwej series, why not put a guide together for that? I know nothing about Erimem or The Candy Jar stuff, but I'm open to learning. And I'm sure Epsilon is one of the better qualified people in the world to write a guide for Iris Wildthyme. Hell, there could be guides for Who literary criticism or the very basics of the wider fan ecosystem if we really wanted to do that. (I'm not saying this one is a good idea. But it's possible.) I think there's a lot of opportunity here, especially given the upcoming events. Najawin ☎  03:07, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Discussion
=Validity: Biographies of Authors: Ready=

Opening Post
So. Historical background. When The Book of the Enemy was first being covered on this wiki there was some confusion on how to cover it, as there's a fair bit of linking material aside from just the short stories therein. User:NateBumber and User:Shambala108 have a small discussion about how to deal with this at Talk:The Book of the Enemy (anthology), and as an afterthought Nate decides to cite the author biographies as part of this linking material.

I end up doing my summaries for this anthology two years later, and find that this decision was made, technically validating these biographies, specifically on a page created by Nate, Wilhelm Liebknecht, who is listed as an author for one of the stories in the anthology but has an in-universe page, treating his author biography as a valid source. I mention how Biographies of Authors was treated as valid on Talk:Doctor Who (N-Space) during the time period when we were still having massive expansion of our coverage of the in-universe franchise. Nate noticed this and said that in no uncertain terms he did not intend for his own biography to be valid, and that until the forums were back we should cite the in-universe character biographies to their places in Prenarrative Briefings (more on that later). I was ambivalent, but he went ahead and did so during my absence. (Which is fair enough - I was gone. If you want to read more on the discussion, it can be found at User talk:NateBumber/Archive 3 and User talk:Najawin/Archive 3. Ultimately I don't think this has any real influence on the rest of this discussion, but I include it for completeness' sake.)

So, what exactly is the issue here? Well, if you want to read TBotE completely unspoiled, turn back now.

TBotE as a whole is a fairly ambiguous piece of work, in the grand tradition of Faction Paradox. What isn't ambiguous is that at least one person is recuperating from an encounter with The Enemy and is going through, effectively, debriefing, viewing memories of their encounter with The Enemy and/or other's encounters with The Enemy. (These constitute the short stories.) In between these psychologically harrowing experiences, there are briefings given that are relevant to the topic of The Enemy, to greater or lesser extent, often from characters or entities that are entirely fictional. (I believe all but two of them are written by Simon Bucher-Jones given comments in his biography. The other two are clearly indicated as such, and will be the topic of discussion.)

These biographies, those for clearly fictional authors of briefings, are at times the only context that can exist for these characters outside of simply saying that they authored a biography, see, for instance, the biography of "Irma Ebbinghaus", which discusses a human inductee into the culture of the Great Houses, or often provides crucial context to the stories in which they already exist, such as Malachi Yarrow's history with the Mal'akh, or Robert Scarratt's defection to Faction Paradox.

In the briefing authors there are two who aren't clearly fictional. (Well, three, but Alain Chartier is explicitly stated to be a pseudonym for the poem in the book.) "Lesley Drakken" and "Michael Simpson". Of these I think a case can be made that we might treat Michael Simpson's biography as valid as well, as it includes the section:
 * "The entity that later emerged from the library still called itself Michael Simpson (though whether you should believe it is up for debate) and declared itself a War historian and potential author to any sapient creature that would listen (which certainly brings the entity’s honesty into question)."

But this isn't necessary.

Okay, more weirdness. Back to Wilhelm Liebknecht. Who is Wilhelm Liebknecht? Well, he was a German politician. He did not write the story attributed to him in this anthology. Who did? I assume Simon Bucher-Jones, both due to him stating that anything not written by the others in the anthology was by him in his author bio, as well as its specific identity of The Enemy.

This leaves us with, roughly, five questions.

How do we treat biographies of authors who wrote narratives who aren't Wilhelm Liebknecht? Nate has stated that his biography wasn't intended to be a valid source, but there's some biographies in here where it's not trivial to me that their authors aren't trying to do a Contributors (short story) style thing. (I lean towards ruling all of these invalid, in spite of the blatant violation of T:NO SELF REF. I think the rule 4 statement is as unambiguous as we're going to get unless one of the others says they did intend their bio to be valid, and that's just going to be an even bigger headache.)

How do we treat "Wilhelm Liebknecht", given that his author biography is a very real, "in character" biography of the actual person that simply didn't write the story in question? (Is there precedent for this? I honestly don't know.) Do we keep saying he wrote the story in question? Do we treat him like a fictional character? I'm pretty sure this is Bucher-Jones, but this is inference, not explicitly stated.

How do we treat the biographies of authors of briefings aside from Drakken, Simpson, and Chartier, given that all of them are fictional. Do we treat them as individual short stories? Eg, "Scarratt defected to Faction Paradox. (PROSE: Captain Robert Scarratt (TBotE Short Story))"? Do we then attribute the briefings in question to these fictional authors? (I would hope not, but, you know, it could happen. Especially if we attribute The Map and the Spiders to "Liebknecht".) (I think I'm gonna say these should be valid but the precise way in which we implement this is up for debate.)

How do we treat the biography of Chartier? Pretty easy, just valid/invalid. Chartier didn't actually write the poem so it's an explicitly fictional biography (involving references to "time active powers") that explicitly didn't write anything in the book. imo this depends on how we treat the above category.

Finally, how do we treat the biographies of Drakken and Simpson? Drakken writes a poem in her briefing, and her biography makes no reference to any suggestion that she's an in-universe character. Simpson's biography contains the section I referenced above, and his briefing,   one I deeply dislike, is completely consistent with the in-universe characterization given in that biography, treating himself as a historian of The War. I'm.... Not sure about how to handle these two. I think I lean towards invalidity here as well, just because of Drakken's, and the fact that it's a bit of a mess otherwise. But I think Simpson intended for his to be in-universe, tbh. Do we treat Simpson as being a solely out of universe author, or give him pages for both his in-universe and out of universe versions? This is a somewhat relevant question, because while I haven't fully wikified TBotE, in part due to these issues, the page Whig should probably include the section:
 * Michael Simpson compared the Great Houses to the Whig Party. (PROSE: Pre-narrative Briefings)

Or similar. Hopefully that would redirect to an in-universe version of Simpson, and if so, without his biography, we're left with something like:
 * Michael Simpson wrote a briefing comparing the Great Houses to the Whig Party. (PROSE: Pre-narrative Briefings)

As his in-universe page. Which, again, I don't think his is intent. So this one is a bit messy. Though, again, I think I lean towards invalidity.

I hope you all can understand why this is an issue that required the forums to resolve it. It's thorny enough that there needs to be serious discussion, but I'm bullish on it getting done in 3 weeks. Najawin ☎  05:43, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Discussion
=Modification of Temp Forums proposal page: Ready=

Opening Post
Maybe I'm just tilting at windmills, as I'm wont to do, but I think we can improve the current "voting system" on the temp forums and better give information to admins as to what threads should be discussed. For instance, I've noticed some users repeatedly move their name on and off certain projects due to mixed feelings, or strategic views about timing, etc. I think this could be better captured if we had a column for "supporting with low priority" rather than having people tactically voting. I've also noticed that some users are deliberately voting for proposals in order to argue against them, and I've been guilty of this as well. I think we'd be best served if there was a way to convey to admins more information about our preferences, so they can best gauge which threads will be productive and which are best delayed until later.

My current suggestion is "support with low prio" + "ambivalent" + "support to argue against", but obviously this is subject to change. Najawin ☎  04:25, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Discussion
=Decoupling Help from CC: Ready=

Opening Post
Yeah, I think this is relatively obvious in its principle. If we maintain our own Help pages we allow for more specialized advice for editors/users than what they would get from Community Central, and it's not like we can't link to the CC Help pages. For instance, compare our version of Editing with CC's.

Some level of admin action will need to be undertaken immediately to try to decouple the two, as well as to try to save some of the pages that are lost, if possible. (For instance, T:FAITH seems to just be gone. User:Najawin/Assume good faith redirects to a blank page, and while these redirects on User:Najawin/Sandbox 6 will get you to the pages that are largely inaccessible, you can't view the edit history or edit them as a regular user. Trying to do so sends you to CC.) After that, there might need to be a project to update them, as some of them are quite old, but that's secondary to actually recovering what's been deleted. Najawin ☎  04:52, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Discussion
=Categories for stories without summaries: Ready=

Opening Post
I think this is fairly self explanatory. A lot of stories on this wiki, be they prose, audio, or comic, don't have real summaries. It's something we're often criticized for, be it fair or unfair. One way to help this issue is to create categories for stories without plot summaries so that we can better track where work needs to be done on this wiki.

In my mind the question becomes "which categories" and "are they visible or hidden"?

explicitly says that we should refrain from making categories hidden without good cause, but these categories are explicitly for wiki editors to use as bookkeeping. I'm unconvinced that there's good reason for them to be visible.

That leaves us with what categories. Quite frankly, should we just have "story without a summary"? "Prose work without summary"? "DW prose without summary?" "VNA without summary?" There's levels of specificity here that we can delve into, and I believe precedent wants us to be as specific as possible. I can see arguments both for and against. (For: It makes it easier to find the specific area you want to work on. Against: It obscures precisely how many stories don't have summaries.) Overall though I think specificity is a good thing here though.

I think this proposal is a relative no-brainer. It's just something to make our lives easier, but is weird enough that it probably needs a forum thread. Najawin ☎  03:49, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Discussion
=Etc vs Et al: WIP=

Opening Post
To dreeeeeeeaaaaaammmmmmm the impossible dream.

Discussion
=Invalidity: Curse of Fatal Death: WIP=

Discussion
=Category:Non-heterosexual real world people: WIP= If needed. I'd prefer JDPM to write this up.