User:CzechOut/This wiki's scope

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. Unlike a lot of other franchises, our copyright holder has deliberately chosen not to define a canon. Which means we're stuck defining the borders or this wiki. 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.

The general rule
We believe that the main determinant of whether a story "counts" is whether it was officially licensed by the relevant copyright holder. In most cases, a story can be used to write the main body of an article so long as:
 * it is professionally published;
 * has a Doctor Who, SJA, Torchwood, K9 and Company or K9 logo on it;
 * has some kind of notation that it is produced under license of, or is copyright of, the British Broadcasting Corporation (or, in the case of K9, Metal Mutt Productions).

Following that simple guideline will allow you to determine whether a story is regarded as canon by this wiki well over 90% of the time. But there are exceptions.

A practical example
Why does it matter whether we think something "counts" or not? Because only stories within our scope can be used to describe an "in-universe" topic. For instance, if we were writing about Sarah Jane Smith's experience of the country of Italy, we could use anything within The Masque of Mandragora of even The Ghosts of N-Space. But we could not use something from a 1986 fanzine in which Sarah Jane was described as having visited Florence.

Getting down to specifics
explain bbv stuff and other things we allow that aren't obvious to the stating of the general rule

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