Forum:Temporary forums/Subpage policy

Draft 0.2, cobbled together from miscellaneous talk pages without regard for tonal consistency.

Introduction
For a long time, I've had a "Policy" section on my user page listing a broad array of concerns and suggestions that I have. It's taken me a long time to realize, but many of these could be addressed by a singular policy: the establishment of a proper use of subpages on this wiki.

Traditionally, changes that affect large numbers of pages are discussed and decided in the forums. However, we have been without forums since November 2020, leaving our decision-making process paralysed, and there is no sign that they will return anytime soon. While I'm writing this page like a forum argument, I do not believe forums are necessary for this policy. The majority of pages that would be affected, such as the "Subpage-like pages" I describe below, belong to a simple type.

Proposal
What is the use of a subpage? When a top-level section on a page is too big, consider creating a subpage. Top-level sections are headings formatted with ==, such as "Biography" or "Plot". There should never be in-universe subpages: for instance, if the section Twelfth Doctor were deemed too big, we would move it to Twelfth Doctor/Biography, not Twelfth Doctor/Continued adventures with Clara.

Subpages are only meant to be linked to from their root page and navigation templates. For instance, Twelfth Doctor - list of appearances is only linked to from Twelfth Doctor and, making it an obvious candidate for a subpage. For the same reason, before creating a subpage, it's always worth asking whether it's possible to split the material without using subpages. For instance, I created The Doctor's early life and The Master's early life to cover conflicting accounts of their origins when First Doctor and The Master became too unwieldy. Other examples include pages for broadly-defined eras in the Doctor's life, such as Exile on Earth, and pages for specific events, like Operation Mannequin for the events of Rose. Following this principle, the solution to the length of The Master is splitting it into pages for incarnations, not simply hiding material in The Master/Biography or "incarnation subpages" like The Master/War Master.

After creating a subpage, link to it from the root page with and replace the copied text with a shorter summary of the information, emphasising details which are most likely notable to the not we. In practice, this usually means TV information, although it can also include especially notable content from other media. The same principles apply to the writing of lead paragraphs: you shouldn't need Ctrl+F or a lot of time to find the most important details about a topic. As an example, last night I wanted a quick refresher on Stanley Kubrick, and by skimming the first few paragraphs of on my phone, it was trivially easy to find his death date and most notable works within seconds. In contrast, right now you can't even answer the question "what episode did the Twelfth Doctor regenerate in?" without scrolling 277th paragraphs down Twelfth Doctor!

Subpage-like pages
Many articles on this wiki are already written like subpages. Our 1000+ lists of appearances are perfect examples of subpages in both purpose and execution – except that they're not actually subpages! Twelfth Doctor - list of appearances, to name of one of many, should be moved to Twelfth Doctor/List of appearances. Similarly, we have almost 100 "galleries", most of which are already linked to from story or series pages with. BBC New Series Adventures covers should be moved to BBC New Series Adventures/Covers without hesitation.

You might ask, why would it be better to put these articles as subpages rather than the status quo? What are subpages, anyway?

Compared with best practices, subpages are direly underutilized on this wiki.

Story summaries
We're notorious for our lack of plot descriptions. A solid majority of story pages on this wiki show their plots as to be added. This is understandable: few editors actively enjoy typing out lengthy plot descriptions, and those who do often hold themselves to extreme standards of detail. But these to be added tags, many of them 15 years old or older, are a problem: according to Fandom's Editor Experience team, "Stubs do provide a bad experience because the readers and search engines that encounter them are left wanting more and an incomplete page (even if it is marked incomplete) has not been proven to "attract editors from the reader base to add to or expand the page" as was once assumed. Every day that a stub exists and remains incomplete is a day that bad experience persists."

- FishTank

Subpages offer us a way out. Rather than marking thousands of story pages as stubs just because they lack lengthy plot breakdowns, we should put these breakdowns (when we have them) on "Plot" subpages. This wouldn't even require a change to our preload templates! It would look something like this:

Summary
A brief, non-spoilery teaser that someone could use to check if they're interested in a story. If a publisher's summary is provided, this is where it would go, in which case the section is called "Publisher's summary".

Plot
A short synosis that someone could use to get a gist of a story or remind themselves of the plot. For an example, see Silver-Tongued Liars (short story). Unlike our full plot descriptions, which tend to provide enough detail that you could use one experience the story without actually experiencing it (!), these shorter plot synopses could be written from memory without any editors needing to take notes on every aspect of a story, with all the pausing and relistening that entails. Not only would they make our pages less likely to appear unfinished, their length would also make it easier for readers to access other sections on the page. All the while, readers interested in nitty gritty plot details would still be able to easily access that information (when available) by clicking to the subpage via.

Biographies
In Thread:264489, Shambala108 ruled that the biography sections of character pages should only have 2-3 sentences per story. This ruling was widely ignored – I do not think it has been enforced on any page anywhere – and I believe that many, myself included, did not understand it at the time. But I have come to see the wisdom in Shambala's approach.

We can use Twelfth Doctor/Biography to cover the character's biography in maximum detail while Twelfth Doctor gives a briefer overview focusing on major appearances.

Our purpose as a wiki is to cover DWU-related stories and concepts as they exist, in whatever way will best serve DWU fans: the not we, who are often browsing on mobile, without Ctrl+F or familiarity with our citation formatting, and for a limited period of time. The reason we have rules like T:NPOV is because long ago we judged they were the best way to serve DWU fans as a wiki, not because promoting non-TV content was one of our priorities.

Peter Capaldi's difficulty in finding relevant information on our wiki invites us to rethink our interpretation of T:NPOV. Realistically, TV information should be surfaced in, such as at The Beatles and Musée d'Orsay; by the same principle, much of the non-TV information in sections like Tenth Doctor should be relegated to subpages.