User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-1432718-20200311152817

I don't know anything about this topic, but a discussion on User:Danniesen's talk page is being moved here for general input. I'm posting the conversation thus far:

Timeless species in Doctor infoboxes
Hey there Danniesen, I noticed you added a link to Timeless Child's species in the "species" variable for the infobox on each incarnation of the Doctor. I'm wondering whether you think all the species variables should be changed to a link to The Doctor's species instead, maybe in a way similar to the current |alias = see list paradigm? This would tie in with some other thoughts I've had about an "Infobox Incarnation" template. Let me know what you think. – N8  ( ☎ / 👁️ ) 14:48, March 11, 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't think we should change the link to "The Doctor's species". The reason being that that particular article sums up something very vague that says (paraphrasing) "the Doctor could be various different species, we don't know for sure", whereas the "Timeless Child's species" is one specific species that cannot be debated, we just don't know very much about it other than the regenerative ability. --DCLM ☎  15:01, March 11, 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't follow. The whole point of the page The Doctor's species, Danniesen, is that whether the Doctor is a member of the Timeless Child's species (or of any other given species) very much is debatable based on various conflicting sources. No two ways about it, Lungbarrow or Doctor Who and the Daleks, just to name a few, are not consistent with the Doctor having originally been of the Timeles species and then abandoned at the Boundary for a Shobogan to find. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  15:08, March 11, 2020 (UTC)
 * That's the whole point of multiple species points in "individual infoboxes". So that we can add multiple "species" points. --DCLM ☎  15:11, March 11, 2020 (UTC)
 * Maybe, but since we do have The Doctor's species to handle this special case where it's not (only) that the character is a hybrid of several species, but that we have a wealth of conflicting accounts, isn't it simpler and more elegant to link to that? Especially as this allows us to standardize all Doctor pages. Because I mean, can we say that The Doctor (The Cabinet of Light) is of the Timeless Child's species, per se? The precedent of "just because Missy says 'every dead human' has been turned into a Cyberman doesn't mean we put Amy Pond in Category:Individual Cybermen" suggests we can only say that incarnations of the Doctor acknowledged by The Timeless Children itself are Timeless. --Scrooge MacDuck  ☎  15:17, March 11, 2020 (UTC)
 * Which is exactly why I only put it on those specific TV-appearing versions of The Doctor. And I gotta ask the question, if the Doctor's species was various/variable long before The Timeless Children, why have we only created the page AFTER that episode? --DCLM ☎  15:21, March 11, 2020 (UTC)
 * Because the Wiki isn't perfect and we're only human. But The Doctor's species's creation was part of an effort that's been going on for some weeks now and also included the creation of The Doctor's early life. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎  15:24, March 11, 2020 (UTC)
 * Butting in here, first of all User:Danniesen your last question is irrelevant. User:Scrooge MacDuck answered it better than I could. Second, I'm moving this discussion to the forums since it covers multiple pages and you could get more input that way. Shambala108 ☎  15:28, March 11, 2020 (UTC)