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: WIP=

Opening Post
Blehhhhhhh.... Need some time to collect my thoughts here. Relevant discussions are at Talk:Scarlett Johansson and Template talk:Faction Paradox members. I'm honestly not sure what my proposal will be here, if I even have a clear position, I've changed my mind so much. But I do think rules need to be created. Look at T:IBOX and related for similar? Look at Wookiepedia and Memory Alpha? Here and here seems to be the extent of wp's documentation. Not a ton of hard and fast rules. Here (and talk page) seems to be the only hard and fast "rules" of nav templates for MA. Ugh. Easy for them to say, their franchises are so much easier to work with than ours.

Maybe tfwiki? I'll check them out next.

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

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 Subjective Interlock (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.

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
=Invalidity: Curse of Fatal Death: WIP=