Talk:First Doctor

How detailed should things be
Hi, it has come to my attention that there is some disagreement regarding the extent to which the latest episode should be covered on this page. First of all, as always, I invite you to explain the thinking behind your edits here on the talk page. It is quite common that different edits are based on different ideologies and learning about the modi operandi of other editors was always very illuminating for me. Amorkuz ☎  23:33, January 4, 2018 (UTC)


 * Meanwhile, let me leave my two cents. My firm belief is that all relevant information should be on the wiki but it should be curated according to the focus of each particular page to maximise usefulness for the readers. Detailed plots on story page is something that is sorely missing all too often. (Even so, plot does not equate to a transcript and should be shorter, more digested, if only for copyright reasons.) Care should be taken to treat all stories equally. Most recent stories should not be given more prevalence than older ones. Indeed, every most recent story soon ceases to be one. Things that seem important because they are fresh and emotionally raw for us now may well become mere footnotes in one-two years. All articles should be written from the point of view of a historian looking back (from the end of the universe for in-universe pages or from some unspecified future for BTS portions). Less blogging on the spur of the moment; more recording for posterity. A good mental exercise is to imagine reading this article right after the (imaginary potential) regeneration of the Thirteenth Doctor to see whether a particular detail still seems important then.


 * Apart from this global posture, there is a peculiarity of this particular character. Personally, I settle on different level of details for blink-and-you-miss-them characters, guest characters, companions and Doctor's incarnations. How compact the information should be naturally depends on the total amount of information available. If one struggles to fill the height of the infobox with the available info on the character, there is no problem writing everything in excruciating detail (such as is known). On the contrary, the page of a Doctor incarnation is almost without exception extremely long. There are dozens of stories, from all media. Making sense of his/her life is hard enough when each story is represented by a short paragraph. Putting even a short plot of every story would, IMHO, make the page rather unusable for anyone. Thus, I generally am for brevity on pages such as this. Only the most basic of information. Veni-vedi-vici, followed by a link to a more detailed description on the stories page. Amorkuz ☎  23:56, January 4, 2018 (UTC)


 * This one's actually pretty easy, since it's stated elsewhere on this wiki (and as usual, I don't remember where, but if I find it I will post it) that character pages should really only have no more than three sentences per story. We want to differentiate our character pages from our story/plot pages. There are several reasons for requiring this brevity (some of which are included in User:Amorkuz' statements above):
 * The longer a page is, the longer it takes to load, the harder it is to find specific information, and the harder it is to find a particular error to fix. A Doctor usually accumulates dozens of stories during his tenure, and he can accumulate far more than that after his actor has quit the job.
 * Tardis:Neutral point of view specifically tells us to treat all stories equally. That means we do not say that the TV stories should get more text per story while the other media are just fine with a couple of sentences per story.
 * This is a wiki, and I think that some people aren't aware of what a wiki's purpose really is. The goal of a wiki is to get readers clicking on as many links as possible (that's why we link so often on pages and why orphaned pages are bad). If someone is reading a Doctor's page, and wants more detail on one of his particular adventures, they can click on the story link. If someone wants just an overview of that Doctor, they don't have to wade through detailed descriptions of adventures they might not be interested in.
 * Unfortunately, this guideline is not found at Tardis:Guide to writing Individuals articles, but it probably should be. The closest I can find to a definitive statement is located at User talk:Shambala108/Archive 1, but I will keep looking. Shambala108  ☎  01:17, January 5, 2018 (UTC)


 * Well, I've always gone by the three paragraph mindset when recapping episode entries, with exception to "wham episodes" that go on longer. Still, 4 pages on word is a bit much for a single episode, especially when its only one hour long, and the First Doctor had serials that went on longer than that that are barely covered by one paragraph as it is.BananaClownMan ☎  09:43, January 5, 2018 (UTC)


 * Just for personal clarification, if we are really only meant to have three sentences per story for character articles, that means a lot of pages (particularly NewWho ones) need a major overhaul. The Eleventh Doctor alone has paragraphs on paragraphs for just single stories - The Eleventh Hour (TV story) alone has seven paragraphs dedicated to it. So is it necessary we shorten those pages to fit this three sentence rule? Snivystorm ☎  15:13, January 5, 2018 (UTC)


 * Well, going by what Shambala108 is saying, it seems more like a guidline than a rule; something to encourage recaps from getting out of hand and dwarfing the rest of the page. Like how looking when crossing the road is not strictly legal, but people are taught to treat it as such.BananaClownMan ☎  17:02, January 5, 2018 (UTC)


 * We kinda have to draw a line though, otherwise debates like this will keep cropping up: "is it only three sentences for episode stories, but three paragraphs for finales then four pages worth for special episodes?". We have to settle what length is acceptable and what isn't otherwise there will always be a clash between editors, like now and at some point down the road, disputing what is long enough and what is not. I personally have no problem dedicating a few paragraphs for each story, but this will (given not every editor will value each story as equal) create unbalance between stories. Also, as Amorkuz mentioned, even a single paragraph given to every single story would make the length practically unbearable, particularly on the ever growing mobile users. Snivystorm ☎  17:13, January 5, 2018 (UTC)