User talk:Freddie R. Aldous

Hi, fellow TARDIS Index File editors,

Welcome to the small quiet corner in the seemingly infinite depths of the TARDIS Index File that is my talk page.

If you contact me on here, I will reply on here and leave a copy of my reply on your talk page; I will check back as often as I can. So if you have any questions, suggestions and/or comments about my contributions to the TARDIS Index File, put your fingers to the keyboard and leave them here.

All I ask is that new messages be placed under the last to avoid my getting hopelessly confused, and that no inappropriate comments or bad language be used; the TARDIS Index File is a family website, y'know!

I look forward to hearing from you.

Note: Before anyone even thinks of asking: sorry, but I'm not related at all to the actor Robert Aldous, who appeared as the insurgent in The Dalek Invasion of Earth: World's End &mdash; though I wish I was!

Thanks
Just saw a couple of your recent edits at both Winston Churchill and Nicholas Courtney. You may have thought it a small thing to add proper italicization to stories at the Courtney article, but I, for one, wish more editors would "sweat the small stuff" like this. We need more plain, old-fashioned copy editing like this around here. And thanks too for chronologically sorting the events at Churchill. It'll make that article easier for readers to comprehend. Please, keep up the good work :) 13:20:12 Tue 01 Mar 2011


 * Thank you for your kind words, czechout. Also, congratulations for being the first member to leave a message on my talk page. I believe that if editing on the TARDIS Index File – or any other Wikia for that matter – is worth doing, it's worth doing well. And I'm glad you appreciated my work at Winston Churchill; it took me ages to sort everything out and type it all in... :-) Freddie R. Aldous 21:30, March 2, 2011 (UTC)

20:40:49 Fri 11 Mar 2011 16:06: Tue 20 Dec 2011

Caution: plagiarism
Hey, Freddie. Thanks for your recent edits. One of them has me really concerned, however. Your addition of the summary to Who's Who? is so close to a violation of T:DON'T COPY as to be almost plagiarism. Our summaries need to be, well, ours. It's not sufficient to go to the Doctor Who Reference Guide and merely reorder the words they have used. I'll grant that it wasn't an exact copy of their summary of the story, but all you really did was change word order. You didn't change the word choice really at all. Thus, I was forced to roll back your entire edit.

Please remember that the best way to edit this site is to have a copy of the story in front of you, and for you to make your own summary, without reference to any other source. I strongly advise you not to make major edits to articles about stories that you have never personally experienced. 15:50: Sat 31 Dec 2011


 * I understand your actions, czechout, and accept your warning and advice. I apologise for what I did; I guess I must have gotten a little carried away in my editing. :-( Rest assured, it won't happen again. Freddie R. Aldous talk to me 16:44, December 31, 2011 (UTC)

Neil Harris
He's obviously kidding, of course. I take it you've actually seen the Whomobile appearance in the circus? 15:06: Tue 06 Mar 2012


 * Yes, I have definitely seen the Whomobile's appearance in Billy Smart's Children's Circus, czechout. Thank you for asking.


 * And, as well as hoping that the Doctor succeeded in helping Gabriella Smart find her lost performing dogs in time for her forthcoming act, I hope Neil Harris was kidding... :-) Freddie R. Aldous talk to me 15:26, March 6, 2012 (UTC)

What's a comeo, may I ask?
Probably a humorous but brief appearance. --2.96.18.149talk to me 12:37, March 18, 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, if you say so, 2.96.18.149... :-) --Freddie R. Aldous talk to me 11:39, May 20, 2012 (UTC)

Timeline subsections
A discussion earlier this year at Forum:Timeline sections on pages decided that we would remove timeline sections from all pages. On the In the Community (short story) page I noticed you re-added them in all but name under continuity. I've removed them, but have left the information in the continuity section. --Tangerineduel / talk 15:26, December 28, 2012 (UTC)


 * Thank you for pointing this out to me, Tangerineduel.


 * To be honest, I had no idea Timeline sections were no longer being used, and apologise for adding Timeline subsections for In the Community (short story).


 * I accept the reasons for your removal of these, and will avoid using them in future edits.

Freddie R. Aldous ☎  15:54, December 28, 2012 (UTC)

Recent edits
Hi! I had to remove/change some of your recent edits, and I wanted to explain why. Many of your edits added timeline-y info to the continuity sections of stories. As a community this wiki decided, in Forum:Timeline deletion, to remove the timelines from story pages as they were too speculative. Any time you use words like "assumed" or "may be", it's speculation. If you enjoy timelines, there is a place where you can go to input that info: Theory:Timey-wimey detector.

The other kind of edits I had to change involve the stories Playtime (short story) and Girls' Night In (short story). As long as stories are considered valid on this wiki, they are given equal weight (see Tardis:In-universe perspective point number 4). Therefore, we usually treat conflicting stories as conflicting accounts, rather than saying one must be "imaginary", which falls under speculation.

Thanks for your attention! Shambala108 ☎  14:56, April 15, 2013 (UTC)

Release days
Argh!! Okay, I need to stop you before you get too far in.

Basically, what you're doing is contrary to the decisions made in Thread:121256 and around the wiki. As the one handling days for months now, I would appreciate it if you wouldn't go against a lot of what we've been working towards. Feel free to edit those pages, but please do so in a more productive way; majority of your most recent edits, I'll have to undo.

Here are the basic ground rules:
 * 1) Keep the entries as short as possible. So you made a huge mistake in this diff by adding a whole speech about the name of Invasion. Just say: "Part one of Invasion of the Dinosaurs was first broadcast on BBC1." And that's it.
 * 2) Please do not capitalise numbers or write them in numeral form. Ever. I don't care how it's written on-screen, it's either "Episode one" or "Part one" and that's it. No "Episode 1" or "Part One", okay? In fact, Czech's thinking of possibly changing everything to episode in the near future to keep it consistent.

Aside from those very simple rules that you keep going against, just contact me (or Czech, but I think he's busy) if you have any further questions.

If you want to help the cause, then just leave a message on my talk page and I'll tell you some of the stuff that needs to get done. Thank you. :) --SOTO ☎ 11:32, August 5, 2013 (UTC)
 * Naa, it's fine. I'm not scolding you or anything; I'm sure you meant to help. I just wanted to stop you before I had to undo 365 edits, which would be an incredibly long job without rollback. :P


 * Now. Ways you can help. First of all, remember that you're not at all obligated. You don't owe me anything, or something like that. If you don't want to spend too much time and energy, and I wouldn't blame you, that's fine.


 * If you do definitely want to help, would you mind doing more boring work, or would you rather do something a bit more stimulating? As far as releases go, I feel I'm nearing the finish line, so quite a bit's already been done and a lot of the rest would take too much explaining.


 * So, I'm currently going through releases and adding release dates to them. But, next thing on my list for releases is pretty much going through each day and their WLH reports. So that means I look at 5 August (releases) and go through each link at Special:WhatLinksHere/5 August (releases).


 * Then you might notice that The Suns of Caresh isn't listed. Not quite sure how I missed that, but then you'd edit 5 August and add it in. So:
 * 2002 - Camera Obscura and The Suns of Caresh were first published by BBC Books.
 * Please note that if it's a Big Finish audio, the release date is actually wrong as we don't actually know more than the month.


 * Alternatively, you'll probably find more results if you go through WLH reports for DWU days. So you'd go to 1 January, find a link to that day in an article, and then mention in the talk page that so-and-so-story takes place at least partially on this day, only if of course it's not already mentioned in the article.


 * But that's all rather boring work, especially as you won't always get results. You could add Region 1 DVD releases to release days, which can be found at List of BBC DVD releases. Just click on the links, and write " Name of story was released on Region 1 DVD. " or " DVD box set Name of box set was released in Region 1. "


 * Or, you could add release dates to novelisations (the dates can be found by clicking on the ISBN and opening the Amazon.uk link). Just pop it into the infobox. There's actually quite a bit of other work to be done with novelisations, actually, if you want to get into that.


 * I'm sure if I thought about it, I could come up with a much longer list. Not everything's coming to me at the moment; I'll let you know when I think of more. In the meantime, if you've read the above and still want to help (unlikely), then I'll be glad to give you more information on any of the above tasks. I've got plenty more if you want!


 * If you are interested in anything, say so on my talk page and then come over to Special:Chat so that we can discuss it. Sorry for the long message; I ramble. ;) --SOTO ☎ 13:00, August 5, 2013 (UTC)
 * Also, even if I were an admin, which I'm not, I don't think you can revoke badges. Plus, you earned it — you were trying to help! No need to be so apologetic. --SOTO ☎ 13:02, August 5, 2013 (UTC)

No, wait! Sorry, Region 2, not Region 1. Don't do Region 1. Sorry. --SOTO ☎ 13:28, August 5, 2013 (UTC)


 * I am going to add to this comment by saying that many of your years edits changed numerals to words, the opposite of what Smallerontheoutside has stopped you from doing. So it seems as if you were familiar with this specific guideline. Please familiarize yourself with Tardis:Game of Rassilon rules, specifically "The other rule". The goal of the Game is to improve articles that have been neglected, not make tiny unnecessary edits just to win a badge. Thanks. Shambala108  ☎  14:00, August 5, 2013 (UTC)

By the way, advance warning: once you get to 2010, Blu-rays are released at the same time. (List of BBC Blu-ray releases) All the British (Region 1) Blu-ray releases are already done. So just edit those to something akin to this: --SOTO ☎ 09:50, August 9, 2013 (UTC)
 * 2010 - Whatever was released in the UK on DVD and Blu-ray.

Parts and episodes
Please STOP capitalizing "part" and "episode" and their numbers. You have already been told twice. Please review the post left to you above by Smallerontheoutside. Shambala108 ☎  21:52, August 25, 2013 (UTC)

Capitalization question
Hi! You wrote:
 * "While we're on the subject of 'no capitalization', please could you tell me if episode formats should also remain uncapitalized in the same way: 16mm black & white film, 16mm colour film, 625 line PAL colour videotape etc.?"

These things should not be capitalized. They are not proper names of things, just common names. There are probably similar errors all over the wiki, and they can be corrected whenever you see them. Thanks! Shambala108 ☎  17:37, August 29, 2013 (UTC)

Radio Times notes
Hi! Please do not use bold text in the "story notes" sections of story articles, per Tardis:Bold text. Bold text can only be used in the lead of an article. Thanks! Shambala108 ☎  04:54, September 1, 2013 (UTC)

Prefixes
Please do not remove prefixes from story citations as you did at A Romantic Evening and A Victorian Interlude. Not every user knows the names of all the TV stories, and the prefixes are there for helpful information. Thanks! Shambala108 ☎  13:41, September 23, 2013 (UTC)

No Capitalization on The Sarah Jane Adventures?
Hi Shambala108,

In keeping with Tardis Data Core's style of Doctor Who stories not having "episode", "part" and their numbers capitalized, could you tell me: should the same also be applied to episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures?

I await your reply with great interest.

--Freddie R. Aldous ☎  20:08, May 1, 2014 (UTC)
 * Yup the rule applies to all instances of "part", "episode", etc., including audio stories as well. Shambala108 ☎  20:43, May 1, 2014 (UTC)

HP sauce and brown sauce
Hi! I wanted to let you know what happened with your edits at HP Sauce and Brown sauce. You stated that they are the same and cited Wikipedia. However, we don't use Wikipedia as a source; if they are not declared the same in the DWU, then we don't state it on the wiki. If you can find a source for it, you can re-add it, but it's been removed for now.

I tried to put a tag, asking for DWU sources, but you removed the tag without adding a DWU source. Then, another admin removed the info altogether because it wasn't sourced with a DWU source and there was no tag asking for a source.

In short, anything placed in the in universe portion of an article can only be sourced with DWU sources. If you want to add something from Wikipedia or elsewhere, and it is relevant to the article, it must go in the "Behind the scenes" section.

In addition, the only time a tag should be removed is when the asked-for sources are added in. When I added the tag, I made clear in the edit summary that the info needed a DWU source.

Thanks. Shambala108 ☎  16:10, June 16, 2014 (UTC)

New TARDIS Data Core page: Doctor Who and the Monsters
Hi Shambola108,

Just thought I'd drop you a line to let you know that I've created the page Doctor Who and the Monsters for TARDIS Data Core, to go with that for The Five Faces of Doctor Who.

I've created a few pages for Futurepedia, but this is the first time I've done one for TARDIS Data Core. I'd be very grateful if you and the other administrators could take a look when you get a spare moment and make any changes you consider necessary.

Many thanks. Freddie R. Aldous ☎  12:29, July 3, 2014 (UTC)


 * Keeping in mind I don't know anything about that subject, it looks fine to me. You included the "real world" tag and a category, which is the main thing. Shambala108 ☎  13:41, July 3, 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your kind words, Shambala108. I was sorry to hear you're not familiar with Futurepedia, which is the Back to the Future Wiki and just the place to go if you're a fan of the BTTF trilogy. Anyway, glad you liked my very first contribution to TARDIS Data Core. I'm hoping to create another page for this Wiki in the not-too-distant future, so stay tuned... Freddie R. Aldous ☎  15:58, July 3, 2014 (UTC)

New TARDIS Data Core page: Camfield's Fairy Milk Chocolate
Hi Shambola108,

Just thought I'd drop you a line to let you know that I've created the page Camfield's Fairy Milk Chocolate for TARDIS Data Core.

I'd be very grateful if you and the other administrators could take a look when you get a spare moment and make any changes you consider necessary.

Many thanks. Freddie R. Aldous ☎  17:36, July 4, 2014 (UTC)


 * The new page is fine. I did make a change on The Web of Fear article. The mention of the chocolate doesn't really advance the plot, so it doesn't belong in the plot section. I moved it to the reference section, which is where mentions of objects, persons, organizations, etc belong. (See Tardis:Format for Television Story Entries for more information.) Also, I shortened the description a bit, because references are supposed to be short, and anyone interested in the chocolate can visit the page, and that's what we want — users finding something of interest on a page and clicking on the link to find out more. Shambala108 ☎  03:49, July 5, 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Shambola108. I accept and respect your changes to The Web of Fear (admins know best!), and will bear your comments re. the reference section in mind for future edits. Unfortunately, I regret I don't know the first thing about adding photos to wikis, so if you or anyone else should ever come across the elusive tele-snap from The Web of Fear episode three of the chocolate bar being removed from the platform vending machine by Driver Evans — which has, to date, only ever appeared on the DVD release — and want to add it to Camfield's Fairy Milk Chocolate, feel free. If anything, it'll save having to get the DVD out every time one wishes to view this particular image... :-) Freddie R. Aldous ☎  12:16, July 5, 2014 (UTC)

Tele-snap of Camfield's Fairy Milk Chocolate
Hi PicassoAndPringles,

Just thought I'd drop you a line to thank you for adding to Camfield's Fairy Milk Chocolate the tele-snap of the chocolate bar being removed from the platform vending machine by Driver Evans.

I very much appreciate your help and efforts in tracking down this elusive tele-snap which — until now — could only be seen on the DVD.

Who knows, perhaps one day we'll see a bar of Camfield's Fairy Milk Chocolate (which I personally consider to be the Doctor Who universe's equivalent of the real-life Cadbury's Dairy Milk) again, this time in the new series... Freddie R. Aldous ☎  11:07, July 6, 2014 (UTC)


 * No problem. Anytime you're looking for a screenshot or something, feel free to let me know; I have quite the collection.  P&amp;P  talk   contribs  13:14, July 6, 2014 (UTC)

About real people
I note in this rather old revision to Caroline John that you deliberately switched away from using "John" to "Caroline". While this might be a one-off with you, and you might have done it because she unusually has two names most commonly thought of as first names — I just wanted to make sure this isn't a general editing practise of yours.

It's generally regarded as somewhat offensive to call someone by their first name if you don't personally know them. Indeed, it's absolutely uncommon to find this practice in British English, and we're of course bound by policy to attempt British English 'round these parts. So do please make sure you're not generally referring to people by their first names, since it conveys an unwarranted — and un-enyclopaedic — familiarity.

That said, thanks very much for all your efforts, and I look forward to your edits during the upcoming series! 22:19: Mon 07 Jul 2014


 * To tell you the truth, czechout, I don't really remember that edit at all; I guess I must have done it during an off-moment. I can assure you, though, that this is not one of my general editing practises, and I apologize if I overstepped the mark. I've taken your comments on board and I'll be more careful in future. Freddie R. Aldous ☎  18:50, July 8, 2014 (UTC)


 * Yeah, in total fairness, that edit was a little over two years ago. I didn't really expect you to remember. It was just something I randomly came across while looking at other things. Thanks for taking the comment for what it was — just a general piece of editing advice. :) 19:28: Tue 08 Jul 2014

Episode numbers
I'm really confused. You've been told by multiple people on your talk page to not capitalize the numbers in episodes and parts, and your recent edit to Destiny of the Daleks (TV story) includes many examples of changing capitalized number words to lower case, but still, despite all this, under "Ratings" you capitalized the number words. In addition, I've had to correct the same thing on other pages you've edited in recent days. Please remember this: do not capitalize the number words in episode and parts. Thanks. Shambala108 ☎  22:54, August 1, 2014 (UTC)


 * Think of it this way: if we make an exception to the rule for the "Ratings" section, some new user might see it and think it should be capitalized everywhere. For some rules, it's easier to have no exceptions. Shambala108 ☎  14:12, August 3, 2014 (UTC)

Re: Episode numbers
Hi Shambola108,

Sorry to hear about your confusion re. my recent edits to Destiny of the Daleks. I'll try and explain as best I can.

While I knew that capitalizing numbers, as well as "episodes" and "parts", under TV story sections such as 'Story notes', 'Myths', 'Production errors' etc. was unacceptable and had avoided this at all costs, I had always assumed that 'Ratings' was the exception in this case — having seen the number words capitalized in this section on other TV story pages.

I did at one time, whilst editing, toy with decapitalizing these in 'Ratings', but abandoned the idea as I felt — when previewing the result — that this looked awkward, thus I decided to leave well alone.

I had no idea that capitalization of number words was not allowed in 'Ratings' as well as the other aforementioned TV story sections, and apologize for any inconvenience I may have caused. Thank you for pointing this out and, rest assured, I'll do my best to avoid it in any future TV story edits.

I await your reply with great interest. Freddie R. Aldous ☎  10:44, August 3, 2014 (UTC)