User talk:BelcherMorganJames

'''Welcome to the Thanks for your edits! We hope you'll keep on editing with us. This is a great time to have joined us, because now you can play the Game of Rassilon with us and win cool stuff! Well, okay, badges. That have no monetary value. And that largely only you can see. But still: they're cool!

We've got a couple of important quirks for a Wikia wiki, so let's get them out of the way first. British English, please We generally use British English round these parts, so if you're American, please be sure you set your spell checker to BrEng, and take a gander at our spelling cheat card. Spoilers aren't cool We have a strict definition of "spoiler" that you may find a bit unusual. Basically, a spoiler, to us, is anything that comes from a story which has not been released yet. So, even if you've got some info from a BBC press release or official trailer, it basically can't be referenced here. In other words, you gotta wait until the episode has finished its premiere broadcast to start editing about its contents. Please check the spoiler policy for more details. Other useful stuff Aside from those two things, we also have some pages that you should probably read when you get a chance, like:
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Thanks for becoming a member of the TARDIS crew! If you have any questions, see the Help pages, add a question to one of the Forums or ask on my talk page. Josiah Rowe ☎  15:12, January 3, 2018 (UTC)

Spoilers
Please, acquaint yourself with Tardis:Spoiler policy. We define spoilers differently from the everyday usage of the word. Your latest edits offended this policy in two ways: first of all, no images from unreleased stories are allowed. Hence, series pages where spoilers are allowed in text cannot contain any such images because there is no way, technically speaking, to introduce these images within the page only. Secondly, your edit summary provided information that related to something from the unreleased episode. Edit summaries are present in multiple places including "recent edits" list. They are not confined to the series page either. Please make sure you comply with the spoiler policy in the future. It is one of the most often violated and most diligently enforced policies of the wiki. There is no reason for you to risk a block because of that. Amorkuz ☎  09:14, February 21, 2018 (UTC)

Images
A spot check of images uploaded by you and then deleted by admin showed that (as is very common during the first 100 edits) the images violated several of our image policies. Please acquaint yourself with Thread:148148 to avoid this in the future. As for other edits, If you point to a particular one, I could try to explain why it was reverted. In general, the right place to ask admin is not Discussions (most admin do not check there as we have a separate mod for that), but at the talk page of one of Tardis:Administrators. Amorkuz ☎  22:21, March 9, 2018 (UTC)

Deleted page
Actually, I think I can see which deleted page you mean. Generally, I would recommend you to read the edit summary for the deletion, left by the deleting admin. It usually provides an idea of the reason as well as points to a specific admin to ask. In this case, the page "Bow Ship" was deleted because there is already a page for these Time Lord spacecraft at Bowship. Please feel free to improve it if some of your points are missing there. Amorkuz ☎  12:15, March 10, 2018 (UTC)

Page moves
Hi, please note that per Thread:128198 only admins are permitted to move pages on this wiki. Shambala108 ☎  12:11, April 10, 2018 (UTC)

Cast lists
I’m glad you showed interest in those. However, before continuing editing them, please familiarise yourself with Tardis:Cast lists, Tardis:Cast and crew lists and T:CREW. Thank you. Amorkuz ☎  15:39, April 17, 2018 (UTC)

Cliffhanger lists
You are right that we don't have all the audio cliffhangers. This is something we can work on. However, it is hardly problematic to have them all on one page. After all the List of televised cliffhangers contains cliffhangers for all TV shows since 1963 and works without any problems. That page is 818 lines, which is smaller than 1191 lines of Eleventh Doctor or 1268 lines of Tenth Doctor. If the pages in question become significantly longer, say, more than 10k lines, we may return to this question. But for now there is nothing that would prevent these pages from efficient functioning. Especially given that they get natural subsections, making navigation easy through contents. Amorkuz ☎  19:35, April 22, 2018 (UTC)

Formatting tip
Hey, I noticed you have an interest in adding to the "continuity" section of stories. I'm dropping by to leave a formatting tip: I've noticed in a few pages that you tend to use  when sourcing info, like in this edit. The tip is that this is not necessary; simply typing : (putting the comma outside the prefix link) is the correct/preferred format. Hope this helps, and good editing :) OncomingStorm12th ☎  23:11, April 27, 2018 (UTC)

Patience and categories
Please, do not create new pages in place of existing ones in the queue for renaming. It creates a mess and denies credit to all editors who worked on the original page. Note that the history of changes is an important document that cannot be retained if you just create a duplicate yourself.

If you really are in a hurry to get the renaming done, please, provide me with a time stamp of the dialogue in the story where "Ellis" is stated as their name. I do not have time to relisten to all 2 hours of it, but could quickly check a specific place. Note also that renames are quality controlled by admin, which is why the rename will not happen until one of us has time to verify the name.

Thirdly, please remember that every page you create requires at least one category (stubs does not count). Try to look at similar pages to see what suits it best.

Happy editing. Amorkuz ☎  21:29, May 8, 2018 (UTC)

Companion edits
Hi, I've been spot-checking your rewrites of leads of various types of articles and appreciate your hard work on this. But with companions, a course correction is needed. On this wiki, we have a strict separation between Tardis:In-universe perspective and Tardis:Out-of-universe perspective. You cannot write that someone is a companion of the Doctor and that they were portrayed by some actor in the same part of the article. Each article is either in-universe, in which case actors belong only in infobox and "Behind the scenes" section or the article is written entirely from the out-of-universe perspective. I would appreciate it if you could go over your recent edits, especially of in-universe pages and removed real-world information you've added. Thank you in advance. Amorkuz ☎  12:38, June 20, 2018 (UTC)

Leads for stories
Heya :) Thanks for your recent work rewriting the leads of some of our TV story articles. However, I'm going to need to ask you to change tack. We generally want the leads give readers important, interesting facts about the production which set that story apart from others.  It's also important not to just regurgitate information that's available in the infobox.

For instance, in your recent change to Robots of Death, you've basically shifted the most interesting stuff down a paragraph, just so that you could put information already covered in the infobox — basic details like season, actors, directors, broadcast date, etc. — at the top of the article proper.

Please don't do this.

We determined a long time ago that we were going to prefer leads that characterised the story in some helpful way, or gave information about its production importance — rather than simply saying "this is story X, part of season Y, produced in year XXXX". To be sure, we haven't gotten around to doing it for all stories in all media — but in general the TV episodes have these fuller, more interesting leads. (I know that stories in other media sometimes, even often, give very mundane information in the lead — but this is only because we still haven't gotten around to fixing them yet.)

One modern consequence of this decision: our mobile readers get a better deal. As you may be aware, on mobile devices, the infobox is served first. Then comes the lead. So if the lead paragraph is full of info found in the infobox, we're immediately repeating ourselves. The longer the thumb scroll before they hit new info, the less likely it is that mobile readers will stick around.

So, please, let the infobox convey basic information, and let the lead explain and contextualise the story. Thanks! 14:28: Tue 26 Jun 2018 14:28, June 26, 2018 (UTC)
 * Oh, we don't want you to give up editing here! I know of no one on the admin team who questions the sincerity of your efforts. If it helps, know that I've got a healthy "deleted contributions" list here, too. On very many wikis across FANDOM, I have been alerted to how I've mis-edited. Confusingly, there are things that are completely standard practise here at Tardis which are forbidden on other wikis. So having an admin show up on your talk page isn't much to worry about. It's simply a part of the process of learning how to be a good editor on that wiki.


 * You're at an especial disadvantage on a wiki that's been around for 13 years now. You've necessarily missed whole conversations upon conversations upon still further talks about how we do things around here. And, believe me, I understand the impulse to add the information you did, in exactly the place and style that you did. After all, we used to have that very same content there.


 * And, yes, it's likely confusing that we haven't gotten "proper", TV-style leads to all stories of all media. But I hope you'll appreciate how much work that is, considering both the sheer number of stories and the relative difficulty of writing a proper lead.


 * Here's an thought. For the next little while, when you get an idea of some project you'd like to do, reach out to me or another admin. Give us a general idea of your project. And then we'll help you figure out if it's something the wiki has already tried and rejected, or if it's an innovation worth pursuing. Deal?


 * In the meantime, yes, it would be very helpful if you could revert your edits from The Armageddon Factor all the way back to An Unearthly Child. Thanks! 15:06: Tue 26 Jun 2018


 * Just swinging in to confirm that I believe you are working to improve the wiki and that I too started by blundering into some rules. In my case, I lined up a bunch of contemporaneous photos for a story set in the 19th century. Since I was unaware of Tardis: The real world doesn't count, all photos had to be deleted and all info cleaned from the pages. And, as almost everyone at first, I couldn't format images according to the rules. So happy editing and don't worry about mistakes! That's how everyone learns. Amorkuz ☎  18:18, June 26, 2018 (UTC)

To date or not to date: that is the question
Alas, not is linear in the Doctor Who universe. It would have been nice if time of each story could be determined unambiguously. But writers make mistakes, writers do not do research, writers are not aware of other stories, writers do not care. Sometimes, some writers, that is. Of course, there are cases when a writer even undertakes to correct a dating mistake pointed out here at the wiki. But more often than not, dates do not make sense. The most famous, perhaps is the UNIT dating controversy. There dates are explicit and do not make sense. (I should perhaps mention that Lethbridge-Stewart at some point stated that they fixed, but I cannot provide any details.

I'm afraid, Series 4 (Doctor Who) is a similar case. At the very least, this is not a trivial mistake. I know of one place where editors were trying to square off the contradicting information about this, at Talk:Partners in Crime (TV story). But I frankly is not an expert on the matter.

Thus, I would ask you not to go changing pages, but rather join the above mentioned discussion. IF everyone involved comes to a consensus, great, change it. Otherwise, maybe, in the end, we will be forced to make a page for Donna dating controversy. Amorkuz ☎  22:38, July 16, 2018 (UTC)

Categories
Hi, please do not add categories to pages any more, unless you first ask an admin. Your recent category additions break so many policies that I am not going to name them (because I'd probably forget one or two); however, I would like to point out two forum posts you should read: Thanks, Shambala108 ☎  19:49, July 29, 2018 (UTC)
 * Forum:LGBT categories in-universe and real world - Prop delete
 * Category:LGBT characters?


 * I understand your frustration. Unfortunately, we are dealing with a 14-year-old wiki, with over 65,000 pages and 53+ years of material. Thus we've had to make a ton of rules over the years to keep the place organized and relatively chaos-free. And no one wants to come to a wiki and spend their time wading through a bunch of rules. So most new users and many long-time users still run afoul of the rules. And in my opinion, categories are the worst situation: I wouldn't be surprised if we have more categories than pages; some are incredibly broad, some annoyingly specific; some poorly-named or poorly-described. And the nesting of categories is extremely poorly maintained, mostly because no one has the time or knowledge to clear them up.


 * At any rate, you're not alone in your frustrations. Thanks for your patience, Shambala108 ☎  21:27, July 29, 2018 (UTC)

Species article names
It's an early decision that was made, largely based on how Wikipedia does things. As there, the rule here is to go singular, unless the thing is actually named in the plural. To use examples from T:NAMING, it's nation, but United Nations; beetle, but The Beatles.

But it's not just arbitrary. It actually makes it easier to form plurals in wikitext. If your article name is Dalek, then you form a plural link by typing, which gives Daleks. If the article were named Daleks, then you'd have to type a whole lot more:. In other words, it's easier to add than subtract. :) Hope that helps! 21:50: Sat 01 Sep 2018