User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-88790-20121208143712/@comment-188432-20170810204906

Guys, we've long used creator statements about their works as determinative to Rule 4. That's what's meant by:
 * ...if a story was intended to be set outside the DWU, then it's probably not allowed ...

How else do we know what the intent is but by going back to the creators behind it?

Community discussion has, in the form of what PicassoAndPringles dug up, shown us that the author didn't really mean for it to be in the DWU. You don't need to be familiar with our four little rules to opine that your work isn't connected enough to the DWU to be included on a Doctor Who wiki. And that's really enough to declare this thing invalid. The character can be covered, of course, as far as he appears in other valid works, but not in his own "spin-off of spin-off" stories.


 * Also -- and I'm not casting aspersions on anyone, least of all Obverse -- the fact that something is commercially for sale doesn't mean rights and clearances have been done. Famously, The Doctor and the Enterprise was sold commercially, but had no permission from either Paramount/CBS or the BBC. Fanzines are technically "commercially for sale", but no rights have been cleared. We are right to be suspicious of things that do not directly derive from a BBC license.  And while I'm again not saying anything about Obverse, I just want to dispel the notion that there's a definitive relationship between something being sold commercially and rights having been cleared. That point isn't necessarily determinative of this case. But it is important to float out there on Board:Inclusion debates for the kinds of threads seen here.