Forum:(SPOILER: The start of RtD2) Quickstart Guides

- Yes they are cool here, stop telling me what to do, nerd. -

Opening Post
For the spoiler averse, so long as you're caught up on the BBC press releases for the RtD2 era, you know, the really obvious stuff, nothing in my post should be an issue. I'd like to limit the scope of spoiler discussion in this post to the current (as of posting) BBC press releases for the show's cast and crew, so nobody is surprised.

Moving on.

The basic premise behind this post is that while I was thinking about how to update the wiki for the 60th and beyond, I realized pretty quickly that there were going to be a lot of returning viewers who hadn't seen the show in some years. Either since Tennant1, or Smith, or just fell out somewhere in Capaldi or Whittaker because it wasn't on constantly. I suspect that the 60th and S14 with Gatwa will be a soft reset, minimizing the need to watch what people have missed, but it would behoove us to make the show as accessible as we can for returning viewers. And, let's face it, the show can be intimidating for new viewers as well. (Even in the new series we're on S14. That's not something most genre shows get to. If people start thinking about Classic Who as well... They're pretty likely to be put off and just not start.)

Especially with the Disney+ move there's going to be more eyes on the show and the wiki than ever, so I think making sure that there's a clean way to onboard new viewers is imperative. (I also think that cleaning up our policies is pretty important, for the same reason. :P) As the wiki, we're one of the first places new viewers will go in order to look up information for the series, especially given FANDOM's SEO. We're in a unique position to write up introductions to various parts of the franchise, likely better than anyone else but the BBC.

What do we write, where do we put it, how do we write it?
All of these, are, of course, wildly up for discussion. But I'd like to begin with noting that whatever else is decided I think there should be a link to the Quickstart guides on our mainpage for at least the next two years. As stated, there will be many new and returning viewers, and providing them with a prominent way to slot into the current story with minimal disruption will be incredibly helpful.

Next up, and I expect this to have some level of discussion, I don't think editing the public facing version of the guides should be open to everyone. The admins and the regular editors aren't on all of the time, we can't revert vandalism constantly, and even those of us who do revert vandalism when it happens, well, a determined vandal will keep doing it, especially on our most public pages. Admins can't be on constantly to ban vandals. So however the technical issues are sorted out, I think that the public facing versions of these pages should be only editable by admins or however we define the namespaceprotection. (I absolutely do not trust "autoconfirmed users" as a protection level. I've seen far too many vandals have 4 day old accounts and edit pages that are supposed to be protected.)

I think this should be done with a new section in the Theory namespace, similar to Timelines or Discontinuity, the namespace was designed for essays, after all, (see Thread:117238 at User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon I - other options for the name were floated such as "thesis") but lock every page involved. Lock the index for Quickstart guides (which would be linked to both on the main page and on the theory index). Lock each individual guide. Have sandbox versions somewhere (perhaps also linked on the theory index page - so it's Timelines, Discontinuity, Quickstart, Quickstart Sandbox), and when you want to push a change to the public facing version version of the guide you talk to an admin. If you want to make a new guide you go through the same process.

Now, in what style do we write these guides? What might a potential guide look like? I think an answer to this has to be more of an art than a science. For instance, a "bare minimum" guide for the new series might explain the basic premise of the show and give you jumping on points, Rose, Eleventh Hour, Pilot, Woman Who Fell to Earth. I might suggest that a "Crashcourse" guide would explain the basics some behind the scenes issues, like actors and show runners changing, noting that occurring when it happens, and then giving plot descriptions for the various seasons along with highlighting important / well received episodes from each seasons for understanding the overall show. (EG: You could theoretically suggest they watch Rose, Dalek, Empty Child/Doctor Dances, Bad Wolf, Parting of the Ways for S1. Cuts out some stuff, but if they also read a summary explaining the plot points they missed they'll get the gist.) I might also suggest a "background information" guide, which basically just summarizes the entire plot that you might need to know up until a specific plotline. (My guess is that this will be most applicable to audios.)

Obviously this will work itself out through judicious application of informal consensus, but candidates for guides are perhaps tweaking Nate's wonderful FP guides, or guides to Big Finish - I know people that are interested in certain storylines (Divergent Universe, for instance) but are intimidated by the sheer amount of content that exists prior to it that they're not sure if they need to listen to first. We probably have some of the only people on earth who have read the Cwej series, why not put a guide together for that? I know nothing about Erimem or The Candy Jar stuff, but I'm open to learning. And I'm sure Epsilon is one of the better qualified people in the world to write a guide for Iris Wildthyme. Hell, there could be guides for Who literary criticism or the very basics of the wider fan ecosystem if we really wanted to do that. (I'm not saying this one is a good idea. But it's possible.) I think there's a lot of opportunity here, especially given the upcoming events. Najawin ☎  04:02, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

 * Just as a note, I wasn't even sure if this would post since perms are kinda weird on Special:ListGroupRights and technically users can only read the forums, it was as much a test as anything else. An admin can feel free to delete it until we figure out what we're doing. Or we can just use it? I dunno, do whatever. Wasn't trying to jump in line or anything. Figured my test should actually have an OP in case it worked though. Najawin ☎  04:08, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you for this note — yeah, let's stick with the Tardis:Temporary forums setup until the transition to Archives is finished, and a new setup for the Forum: namespace is complete. For one thing, keeping the "proposals that get voted up for a limited number of slots at a time" system going on a permanent basis, instead of sticking with the free-for-all, is definitely something we admins have discussed in the past as regards what we'd do with the definitive New Forums, although that's not definitive. So all in all, significant amounts of work yet to be done before new Forum: threads are permitted.


 * Sorry about the confusion, though; we quite understand this was just a test!


 * I'm just going to admin-protect this to freeze it until it can be done properly. If you'd rather have it moved back to a sandbox so that it can be handled as a T:TF slot in the brief lifespan that system has left, let me know. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 11:05, 11 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Right! W're properly back now, so go ahead! Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 19:16, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

I feel very weird about this proposal. I think, at the end of the day, I have three major issues with the idea.

My first thing, if I am to be blunt, is that this sort of sounds like another toy that we'll fiddle with for a few weeks and then completely abandon. Let me give you a great example: the landing page transmats. No, not the pngs linking to the transmats - the actual landing pages. One glance at things such as Transmat:Species shows that these haven't been properly looked at by editors in years. One part of this page currently reads:

Sometimes, our category names get very specific so that they're clearly worded. A nice, wordy category is the surprisingly helpful Species influential to Earth's past

If you go to the talk page for Species influential to Earth's past and its logs, you'll find it has since been deleted for not being worded clearly enough. So, basically, I can't imagine us being dedicated to yet another "space" which is designed exclusively to explain the site to new readers.

Secondly, I am strongly against any wiki content on this website which can only be edited by admins. We've actually done this before, as The Master's page once had huge sections, designed as templates, which only could be written and edited by admins. These were infamous and often got outdated. See Template:After Cheetahs.

If we are going to do something like this, it must be accessible to all registered users at minimum.

Thirdly - and this will be the most "political" of these three - I think that we are currently in a weird situation where this idea has been pitched by more than one person at the same time.

User:NateBumber has recently and consistently pitched an "out-of-universe lead" which would go on articles before the infobox. These would list less than a paragraph of basic Wikipedia-level info. "The Tenth Doctor was played by David Tennant and was the main Doctor from 2005 to 2010." That kind of thing.

At the same time, I have been slowly ramping up my belief that we should simply create an OOU subpage, perhaps /Behind the scenes or /Real world. Basically, this would be a version of the page written with the same diligence and allegiance to all media but written OOU, which many people prefer.

Now, out of these three ideas - Najawin's Quickstart Guides, Nate's OOU lead, and my OOU subpage - I think only one can realistically pass, as they all serve very similar purposes. And I am just not 100% sure that I view the Quickstart proposal as the best of the three. OS25🤙☎️ 20:01, 24 May 2023 (UTC)