User talk:Scrooge MacDuck

Prisoner of the Daleks
Hi, you were correct that I listened to Prisoner as an audiobook. While I realise it's not a conventional audio story it was my first experience of Doctor Who in the audio medium so it took the place. --Borisashton ☎  06:14, September 25, 2019 (UTC)

i read the talk page of the other in there i read you will make a page for the stranger you know i think stranger the other (11th doctor) are the same doctor in that era still can use his own tardis not to get back to his own he cant do that but you said when he first go there it was after the omegas death but he can time travel in gallifreys own time he possibly go there with tardis there are the same other and the stranger 11th doctor other comes from the future the stranger the other comes from the future also

Re:forum post
Hi I am referring to your post to User:Amorkuz that he must follow Tardis:You are bound by current policy. That's not your job to decide, mention, or enforce.

Please please please stop trying to second-guess everything said by the admins. We are trying our best to enforce the rules and educate the users, and it doesn't help to have users who nit-pick every single post for possible errors. Thanks Shambala108 ☎  05:13, October 4, 2019 (UTC)

Late answer
Hi, apologies, I was away from the wiki for a few days and when I came back I had several messages waiting for me. Somehow I overlooked your signature and answered your questions on someone else's talk page.

It's not a bug that the 10000 thread was not in Board:The Matrix Archives. When I close a recently debated thread, I leave it in the original board for a bit, because these boards, and especially The Matrix, are excruciatingly difficult to search, and I want to make it easier for those who have been reading/participating to find it. I did move it yesterday, so now it's in The Matrix.

And I've left the issue of whether to allow 10000 to User:Amorkuz and the other two admins, since they were the ones who did the major amount of research into this issue.

Thanks and sorry for the confusion. Shambala108 ☎  23:37, October 24, 2019 (UTC)

DCtT
Hey Scrooge, I was just catching up on recent Panopticon threads and stumbled upon this post, where you parenthetically mentioned that "Some [invalid stories] were meant as nothing more than a bit of "non-canon" fun, and shouldn't be misconstrued as an intent to make a new continuity. This would, for instance, include most parodies, and even things like Death Comes to Time."

I agree with your sentiment, and the parodies example is unimpeachable. But upon reflection, I realized you might not be familiar with the award-winning audio series The Minister of Chance, which was written by the author of Death Comes to Time in a very real attempt to continue the new Doctor Who Universe continuity started in that story. Maybe you already knew about this, but I feel as if it's aligned with your interests, so I just figured I'd mention it! – N8  ( ☎ / 👁️ ) 15:12, December 13, 2019 (UTC)

Re: Clown Court
Hi, I hope you understand that the reason why only admins are "allowed" to do certain things on the wiki is to keep new/inexperienced users from making mistakes that take time and effort to clean up. Allowing experienced editors to occasionally do such things might give new users the idea that it's ok for anyone to do it. So the rules are pretty strictly enforced for that reason.

At any rate, Thread:211580 ruled that DW skits in other shows don't need their own pages, but should be placed on Cultural references to the Doctor Who universe. The Clown Court special (TV story) is part of the Noel Edmonds Saturday something, and that is not a DW production, so its information should be put on the applicable Cultural references to the Doctor Who universe page, and then it should be deleted (as should Noel Edmond's Saturday Roadshow special (TV story)).

Hope this makes sense, thanks Shambala108 ☎  02:28, January 6, 2020 (UTC)

Arcbeatle deceptive practices
I'm really glad you asked. Because SOTO does not seem to be willing to allow additional fact finding. They are preparing to close the thread based on their research. Apparently, this research was not as thorough as all that, or else they could have closed the thread yesterday. So they just stifle debate to win more time for themselves. Not sure what precedent they base it on. Not sure how much more time they still need, after 4+ months of silence.

So let me explain how Arcbeatle Press games systems without spending too much money. They use the same strategy that Donald Trump used to get into the Forbes listing. The company publicly inflates their capitals, profits, or in this case fan base trying to pretend to be more successful than it is. Preferably, this is done in a hard-to-verify manner. If sufficiently many people buy it, the lie becomes the reality. The best part is that you can ask your friends, girlfriends, etc. to pretend to be fans. You can ask your collaborators to pretend to be independent fans and defend you publicly. The risks for them are low. The benefits for Arcbeatle are high. If you remember, in the first debate, several participants never disclosed their relationship to James Wylder and Arcbeatle Press until I called them out.

Turns out, the same happened earlier on Amazon, where Wylder publishes their books. Amazon has a review feature but naturally prohibits creators themselves from reviewing their own creations. You might be interested to learn that there Arcbeatle Press had less success than here. One of the people they list as employees was caught reviewing their own books and banned from reviewing on Amazon. This I have a proof of and would be happy to present it on the thread, although I fear SOTO would try to shield Arcbeatle Press from this damaging information coming to light.

Another marketing strategy included Wylder's multiple friends on social networks. He made one of his books free for some time and started asking all his friends to "buy" it. Friends did not lose anything. Apparently, he chose a good week for it because his book became the best "selling" book of the week in the category of free books in the genre. However, when trumpeting his achievement, Wylder omitted the mention of free and claimed that his book was best selling in this genre.

We know this strategy is successful: Donald Trump did become the president, after all. The tiny little problem is that people around you, those helping you have to lie. Just a little bit, just a harmless lie to help a friend. They probably even feel good: helping the underdog and stuff.

But these lies corrupt. I do not know if you like what is going on around the Arbeatle inclusion debates. Do you enjoy them? Would you like to have more of them? Wouldn't you like Revan to continue his activities, not being embroiled with conflicts of interests? This is the price this community has already paid for lies. I fear we are not done paying.

Sometimes I have questions because I have not been vigilant enough. For instance, in October 2019, James Wylder deleted all messages on his Twitter account. What is he hiding? I do not know.

Oh, and if you think that James Wylder never lied about the origins of his literary works, you might be surprised.

Let us see whether SOTO opens up the debate for me to present the evidence I have accumulated of these deceptive practices. I do not actually have a reason to believe you are connected to Arcbeatle Press. Sorry if it sounded like it in my message to SOTO. You can show your neutrality by demanding that this evidence be presented. Then the community can decide whether it is sufficient not to take every marketing statement by Arcbeatle Press as infallible. Amorkuz ☎  18:15, January 12, 2020 (UTC)


 * Yes, I certainly do not know why the Twitter was handled that way. But it was not abandoned. James Wylder continues to use Twitter. One just can't see messages older than October. I agree that the deceptive practices I uncovered do not prove the lack of commercial license. However, the only proof of the existence of commercial license comes from James Wylder himself. It is a perfectly legal strategy first to obtain a permission to use some characters on one's blog, then advertise the stories, gather fans' approval, come back to the copyright holders and tell them, "listen, people would really like to buy these things on Kindle. Could you actually extend your license to a commercial one?" It is slightly less honest but still legal to start the same way, and after the stories become available, announce a commercial volume with them, collect likes and Facebook reactions, come to the copyright holders and tell them: "look, I've already promised, and people really like it..." In either of these situations, the actual process of converting a creative license to a commercial license may take time as the latter generally involves actual money, royalties, and other boring stuff accountants care about. In fact, these additional negotiations could be a perfect explanation why Arcbeatle Press has not published the promised volume commercially, while putting a lot of effort into these stories otherwise. Commercial negotiations with multiple parties take time. And we would not be able to tell one of these scenarios from the other because commercial negotiations are almost never public.


 * I have been suggesting from at least the middle of the first debate to wait till the stories are released commercially. On August 31, in our private discussions with SOTO, I explicitly stated:
 * "I would not stand in the way of inclusion when the book is published."

- Amorkuz to SOTO, August 31, 2019, 10:34


 * Mind you, CzechOut has long ago warned that a commercial publication is not a definitive proof that all rights have been secured (I think he used fanzines as a counterexample). But when the (most of) rights holders are aware of the publication and the publication is commercial, one could consider it more likely that rights have been obtained.


 * Now, on the other hand, all we can see is that the rights holders do not mind the stories being freely available (see, additionally, NateBumber's statement that there is no gatekeeping anyways). Commercial rights may have been obtained from all, or from some with others still under negotiations. In the worst case scenario, by the way, Arcbeatle Press may decide to abandon this project and switch to something new and shiny, like a Cwej-themed anthology, in which case they will have never needed to obtain commercial rights. Or it may be that they would really work hard but negotiations would fall through (for any reason), and again commercial rights would not be obtained for all characters.


 * In short, anything can happen, and we will not be privy to it. I believe this is behind BF policy of not announcing projects until basically the end of post-production is done. They do not want to withdraw any announcements are are super cautious about it. But there is nothing illegal about overannouncing and then retracting. It is a matter of style. And, as I mentioned earlier, James Wylder often tends to be on the hyperbolic side of things. Nor is he beyond even retracting an already published book. Unlike any other regular publication methods, Amazon self-publishing platform allows to simply withdraw a book. If I understand how Kindle works correctly, it will be erased from all Kindles that downloaded it, as soon as they come online.


 * This, by the way, has been another concern of mine regarding books published via CreateSpace. They are not stable. Authors are free to make changes provided these changes are minor, according to their self-declaration. This is in addition to being able to withdraw already published books. And Arcbeatle Press has done it at least once.


 * Alas, I was never able to persuade people to wait for a commercial release. Hence, we are left arguing hypotheticals with very little independently verifiable information. A lot of reasoning on both sides of the debate is of the sort "why else would they do it if not..." and "if they did it this way there in the past, they probably would do it the same way here." Amorkuz ☎  21:02, January 12, 2020 (UTC)