Forum:Temporary forums/Dr. Who? debate

Introduction
So today I am going to talk about a much more general topic, which goes a little beyond my most typical and infamous niche posts about why I want us to cover a lost MMOG from 2011 or an episode of Chute! from 2009.

It may be known by some of you that, in certain circles, our wiki is not the type of wiki Who fans want. Some fans want a wiki that only covers the TV show. Other fans want a wiki that is written like a real-world article, ala Wikipedia pages about DW concepts. But one of the fringe unifying topic I have sometimes experienced is some admiration over one simple page which has since been lost.

That being, The "Doctor Who?" running joke, which I have now had restored and moved to my sandbox so everyone can go look at it, although I've lightly updated it to better show its potential.

So as I was saying, I have had numerous experiences of Doctor Who fans from all corners of the fandom finding a shared... confusion? at the deletion of this page. A few weeks ago, when I told my father the wiki was changing some of its past rulings, he immediately asked about this page. Even six years after it was deleted, it still stands out to people as something that was great.

I think the reason is that even if you aren't fond of our general style of covering media, this was an excellent topic done in the right format. It's a topic that dates back to 1963, and people often get curious about. So people naturally want an article to hold this topic.

I feel about this the same way I've felt about admins on this site who have campaigned for the deleted of /Appearances lists, because "no one can define what an appearance is!" At some point, we have to ask, why do we exist? Why was TARDIS Index File created all those years ago? Why does TARDIS Data Core still continue to have visitors? And the answer is that we are the website people should go to when they're curious about something.

Like, "How many TV stories does Adric appear in?" Go to Adric/Appearances. "What came first? Rose, Eccleston's Blue Peter cameo, or The Trip of a Lifetime?" Go to Ninth Doctor/Appearances, sort by date.

And I think this page was an important example of this. In 2023, if I'm on our wiki and I want to figure out the fifth, seventh, and eighteenth time the Doctor who? running joke was in a TV story... Where do I go? The answer is nowhere. Because we removed the entire page that explored this topic.

History
Before we go any further, I feel it's important to first discuss why this page was deleted in the first place.

The "Doctor Who?" Running Joke was first created on the 18th of November 2008 by User:AKR619. The page existed for barely six months before User:CzechOut created the first deletion proposal on the 5th of February 2009 on the Talk page. Czech argued that there was no way to qualify when "the joke" was being told, and thus the entire page was not justified in existing. A poll of sorts was created in early 2010, with one section for those who supported deletion and another for those who opposed. Czech and another admin (User:Tangerineduel) voted to delete, while six users voted to keep the page. Thus, it was not deleted and the topic was dropped.

Later, one user suggested merging the page with The Question, which was a page covering the Matt Smith arc pertaining to The Silence. For a time, fans believed that any instance of someone saying Doctor Who? constituted that arc being invoked, when in reality it would later be revealed to be in reference to the Siege of Trenzalore. Shockingly, it seems I was in-favor of the merger, when really it was not viable.

In 2013, Czech once again added the "Delete" template, and began again arguing for consensus on deletion. Czech's main issue was that much of the article was sorted via bullet points, something he fought against heavily and I imagine still does. He also argues that as many instances of characters asking the phrase "Doctor who?" are not jokes, the page should not exist. Finally, it was argued that the page was analysis of stories, and that thusly it was something we shouldn't allow on the wiki.

Sadly, this conversation continued to veer off into speculation about the Matt Smith story arc, instead of discussing the realistic topic at hand. However, it was pretty much still clear that Czech and Tangerineduel were the only ones in favor of deletion, as everyone else argued against it.

There was a stalemate. The deletion tag staged on the page for several years, with the main admins refusing to remove it. Finally, on the 28th of April 2017, User:Shambala108 deleted the page, making this the closing post:

"Ok, I'm going to go ahead and delete this page. Though several users argued for retaining the page, two very senior admins, User:CzechOut and User:Tangerineduel, made several irrefutable arguments for deletion."

- Shambala108 ☎ 03:02, April 28, 2017 (UTC)

After this, the person who created the page nine years before, AKR619, left a response stating this wasn't fair, as there had been no user support for deleting the page. He said other things which I'll decline to comment on because I'm shocked they didn't get him blocked.

Putting aside AKR619's strong words... I actually agree with the point they were trying to make.

This is an especially weird situation where a choice was made by the admin team when there was no consensus on the topic. There was absolutely no user support for deleting the page, and actually there was a historical consensus against it. So instead, the Deletion template stayed attached until the debate had died down, and the page was then deleted in 2017 based on an incomplete debate in 2013.

Moving forwards
Now, looking at the restored page... Is it perfect? No.

It does need cleaned up a lot, and already I can see a few instances where the listed examples are a stretch. But these are all things that can be fixed with some effort. I also don't like how the "In Pop-culture" segment is listed, I'd much rather it have citations and maybe a list of examples from non-fictional stories.

Despite this, I feel strongly that this was not only a good page, it was a load bearing page, one that had a purpose that has never been replaced elsewhere. And it's a page that was deleted without any forum-based discussion, or any discussion at all immediately proceeding the page's deletion.

I would like to have that full-scale debate that the page never had. Do you support restoring this page onto the main site? If so, why. If you're against it, why is that? For now, please put aside minor topics, like if you think the page should be renamed or if certain examples should be edited. The topic just about restoration.

Thanks for reading, and for contributing. OS25🤙☎️ 00:23, 25 March 2023 (UTC)