User:Najawin/Sandbox 1

So it seems that we're waiting on opening posts for topics in the opening forums. As such, I'm taking the liberty to write up those that I'm somewhat acquainted with. (Hey, spoilers are down in the Quickstart guide section. Avoid that if you want to avoid spoilers.)

=Conflict of Interest Rules: Ready=

Opening Post
Look, I'll be honest, this issue is a headache, and I'm not proud of my behavior in what led to the discussion of reframing our conflict of interest rules. (I'm sure other people might not care, and User:Shambala108 has assured me it's not a big deal, but I'm really not comfortable and don't wish to recount it.) If someone really cares to look, it's all available through the edit history at Russell McGee, my talk page, Shambala's and User:OncomingStorm12th's.

The tl;dr is that an author was editing his own page, and after it was pointed out to him that this was against the rules, his wife did so for him, both first adapting a Goodreads bio written by the author, and then later using a new bio that was written by a frequent collaborator of his, effectively trying to use the page for self promotion. (Quite frankly, I think the page is still too florid on his charity anthology work + schooling, but w/e.)

Now, look, obviously most authors aren't out here doing this. But it's an edge case in the rules that we might want to clean up. I don't have a super clear policy proposal to start the thread with, there's a variety of directions this can go. Maybe we don't need to fix this! But at the very least I think it's worth talking about.

The most obvious question is "how close is too close?" Like, sure, TBotP is down on my list (though with Nate's vagueposting that might change...), but I'm probably still going to be the one who writes the summary of Nate's short stories. Is that forbidden? By the very nature of who they are, there are some DWU authors whose stories might never get covered if we apply this policy a little too broadly. (So, for instance, I think "acquaintances" is instantly disqualified as a metric. Simply knowing a person does not disqualify you from writing about them.) Maybe no policy is workable. But I think we can at least try to figure it out. Najawin ☎  05:30, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Discussion
=Quickstart Guides: Ready= Please title this post something like [SPOILER: The start of RtD2] Quickstart Guides

Opening Post
For the spoiler averse, so long as you're caught up on the BBC press releases for the RtD2 era, you know, the really obvious stuff, nothing in my post should be an issue. I'd like to limit the scope of spoiler discussion in this post to the current (as of posting) BBC press releases for the show's cast and crew, so nobody is surprised.

Moving on.

The basic premise behind this post is that while I was thinking about how to update the wiki for the 60th and beyond, I realized pretty quickly that there were going to be a lot of returning viewers who hadn't seen the show in some years. Either since Tennant1, or Smith, or just fell out somewhere in Capaldi or Whittaker because it wasn't on constantly. I suspect that the 60th and S14 with Gatwa will be a soft reset, minimizing the need to watch what people have missed, but it would behoove us to make the show as accessible as we can for returning viewers. And, let's face it, the show can be intimidating for new viewers as well. (Even in the new series we're on S14. That's not something most genre shows get to. If people start thinking about Classic Who as well... They're pretty likely to be put off and just not start.)

Especially with the Disney+ move there's going to be more eyes on the show and the wiki than ever, so I think making sure that there's a clean way to onboard new viewers is imperative. (I also think that cleaning up our policies is pretty important, for the same reason. :P) As the wiki, we're one of the first places new viewers will go in order to look up information for the series, especially given FANDOM's SEO. We're in a unique position to write up introductions to various parts of the franchise, likely better than anyone else but the BBC.

What do we write, where do we put it, how do we write it?
All of these, are, of course, wildly up for discussion. But I'd like to begin with noting that whatever else is decided I think there should be a link to the Quickstart guides on our mainpage for at least the next two years. As stated, there will be many new and returning viewers, and providing them with a prominent way to slot into the current story with minimal disruption will be incredibly helpful.

Next up, and I expect this to have some level of discussion, I don't think editing the public facing version of the guides should be open to everyone. The admins and the regular editors aren't on all of the time, we can't revert vandalism constantly, and even those of us who do revert vandalism when it happens, well, a determined vandal will keep doing it, especially on our most public pages. Admins can't be on constantly to ban vandals. So however the technical issues are sorted out, I think that the public facing versions of these pages should be only editable by admins or however we define the namespaceprotection. (I absolutely do not trust "autoconfirmed users" as a protection level. I've seen far too many vandals have 4 day old accounts and edit pages that are supposed to be protected.)

I think this should be done with a new section in the Theory namespace, similar to Timelines or Discontinuity, the namespace was designed for essays, after all, but lock every page involved. Lock the index for Quickstart guides (which would be linked to both on the main page and on the theory index). Lock each individual guide. Have sandbox versions somewhere (perhaps also linked on the theory index page - so it's Timelines, Discontinuity, Quickstart, Quickstart Sandbox), and when you want to push a change to the public facing version version of the guide you talk to an admin. If you want to make a new guide you go through the same process.

Now, in what style do we write these guides? What might a potential guide look like? I think an answer to this has to be more of an art than a science. For instance, a "bare minimum" guide for the new series might explain the basic premise of the show and give you jumping on points, Rose, Eleventh Hour, Pilot, Woman Who Fell to Earth. I might suggest that a "Crashcourse" guide would explain the basics some behind the scenes issues, like actors and show runners changing, noting that occurring when it happens, and then giving plot descriptions for the various seasons along with highlighting important / well received episodes from each seasons for understanding the overall show. (EG: You could theoretically suggest they watch Rose, Dalek, Empty Child/Doctor Dances, Bad Wolf, Parting of the Ways for S1. Cuts out some stuff, but if they also read a summary explaining the plot points they missed they'll get the gist.) I might also suggest a "background information" guide, which basically just summarizes the entire plot that you might need to know up until a specific plotline. (My guess is that this will be most applicable to audios.)

Obviously this will work itself out through judicious application of informal consensus, but candidates for guides are perhaps tweaking Nate's wonderful FP guides, or guides to Big Finish - I know people that are interested in certain storylines (Divergent Universe, for instance) but are intimidated by the sheer amount of content that exists prior to it that they're not sure if they need to listen to first. We probably have some of the only people on earth who have read the Cwej series, why not put a guide together for that? I know nothing about Erimem or The Candy Jar stuff, but I'm open to learning. And I'm sure Epsilon is one of the better qualified people in the world to write a guide for Iris Wildthyme. Hell, there could be guides for Who literary criticism or the very basics of the wider fan ecosystem if we really wanted to do that. (I'm not saying this one is a good idea. But it's possible.) I think there's a lot of opportunity here, especially given the upcoming events. Najawin ☎  03:07, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Discussion
=Decoupling Help from CC: Ready=

Opening Post
Yeah, I think this is relatively obvious in its principle. If we maintain our own Help pages we allow for more specialized advice for editors/users than what they would get from Community Central, and it's not like we can't link to the CC Help pages. For instance, compare our version of Editing with CC's.

Some level of admin action will need to be undertaken immediately to try to decouple the two, as well as to try to save some of the pages that are lost, if possible. (For instance, T:FAITH seems to just be gone. User:Najawin/Assume good faith redirects to a blank page, and while these redirects on User:Najawin/Sandbox 6 will get you to the pages that are largely inaccessible, you can't view the edit history or edit them as a regular user. Trying to do so sends you to CC.) After that, there might need to be a project to update them, as some of them are quite old, but that's secondary to actually recovering what's been deleted. Najawin ☎  04:52, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Discussion
=When Times Change.../Legacies: WIP, VERY MUCH WIP=

Opening Post
Okay. So this one is partially my fault. Only three people have cited Talk:Legacies as precedent on this wiki, myself, Nate, and Scrooge. Eight users were involved in the original discussion in any capacity, two of whom have left the wiki quite definitively, one of whom is Nate, and one was involved at the beginning and has very sporadic wiki activity. As far as I know, maybe 5-10 people "currently on wiki" have read this talk page in its entirety, depending on how you count. Josiah+Shambala+Nate+Scrooge+Me+CoT+Epsilon (he archived it)+(Maybe OS25)+maybe a few others. And, like, it's a talk page with some pretty important policy implications, if how I've been interpreting it is correct. Or if how Scrooge is interpreting it is correct, which is subtly different.

Before we begin, I'd like to contend that no reading of this talk page should be taken as trivial, and if there's any policy implications that have resulted from this page so far (see Talk:Ninth Doctor/Appearances and User talk:VinJordan for some of Scrooge's early hesitancy to make definitive claims about the resolution of this page, along with Talk:Voyager for a more recent statement) this has been through the sheer obscurity and complexity of the discussion in question. Why is this?

Put simply, the page is a mess.

First of all, this is a wildly important discussion that's hidden away on the talk page of some random Candy Jar story. Nobody in their right minds would go looking for policy implications on this page. (Which, coincidentally, is very good reason to do archaeology on old talk pages.) I only found it while trying to better understand certain threads regarding, uh, certain controversial topics. The policies it ostensibly would enshrine, either under Scrooge's interpretation or my own simply aren't available to the average user anywhere. Secondly, the discussion is long. It's got 114,925 bytes, putting it on par with the ~45th largest page in the main namespace. Thirdly, it takes a while to get going, as the first section is somewhat of a prelude to the more interesting discussion later on. Fourth, it's mind numbingly tedious, with users arguing over very minute technical points of licensing issues and copyright law, occasionally with users writing in formats that are, dare I say, obscure and actively hostile to readers for rhetorical effect. Fifth, some of the discussion touches on a story that you cannot find on the internet, that once had a page on this wiki. This page was deleted and locked and there's no discussion about it I can find except on this page and a single user's talk page. So obviously to understand that part of the discussion you also have to find the user in question's talk page. Finally, there's no clear resolution to the page, as User:Amorkuz indicates that he'll continue discussion, it will just take longer due to RL concerns. He simply never does, despite being on the site for years past this.

The page is absolutely horrific to read, is rarely cited, and is really difficult to find. Which is a shame, because the discussion in it is fascinating, and merits close analysis.

Before we proceed further, let's be clear about the distinctions between Scrooge's interpretation of the conclusion of this talk page and my own.

Scrooge's interpretation is straightforward - there is a distinction between using licensed DWU elements and mentioning them. This is a reasonable position to have, not least for the reason that it's basically impossible, under my understanding, to copyright a single word or short phrase, you need to establish some distinct creative expression to it. But I'm not sure this interpretation is correct, it seems to me that the resolution, such as it was, came when there was some level of consensus that IP law wasn't being violated, (in part due to the of genericism of what was being discussed) rather than a hard and fast use/mention distinction. The broader interpretation Scrooge suggests would have also likely prompted the undeleting of another page we're going to discuss in just a little bit, or at least further discussion.

I think both of these are reasonable conclusions to draw from the page - quite a lot of time is spent arguing over how generic certain concepts are and whether they related to the legal entities under consideration, and at the same time there are some specific references to appearance vs reference at the very end of the thread. It's a real mess. User:Josiah Rowe was convinced by the latter, and was inclined to resolve the issue on the basis of use v mention, and User:Shambala108 strongly objected. 2 years later the delete tag that prompted the entire discussion was removed by then mod User:Amorkuz, specifically noting "no activity over almost two years and no consensus". So again, I think no resolution of the page should be taken as trivial, and this is, in part, what I'm hoping here to clear up.

---

With that in mind, let's set the stage. What precisely is the discussion this talk page concerns, and what context is needed for that discussion?

I'm sure much of this is well known by the people reading this thread, either now or in the future, but for those who aren't aware, for a period of about 3 years or so there was a semi public copyright dispute between the BBC and the Haismann literary estate that was started over the BBC (allegedly) using The Great Intelligence in The Snowmen without permission. (See some vague gesturing towards it here.) This led to the creation of a series of non-BBC spinoffs centered around UNIT, the Brigadier, and other related concepts. This in turn became an issue (allegedly) when the BBC tried to rewrite the continuity that these spinoffs were using for the BBC's parentage. (See here and here for contrasting comments, with full knowledge that Methven is pretty accurate on Doctor Who news.) Things have since gotten a lot less tense, but this is the context in which the two relevant stories were written, and this tension had spilled over to the fanbase. The wiki, being a product of the fanbase was not immune to this. I asked OS25, who started the discussion, for some of his motivations, and he provided some context here. (I haven't yet gotten up to that part in my historical dig, but I have no reason to doubt that this recounting of the history is correct, even though it was before my time on the wiki. It lines up with what I've seen on talk pages.)

The first story, Legacies, was released in 2015, and is what the main discussion is about. Note that in April of 2017, this was the state of the page. It corresponds with the first message on the talk page we'll be considering. OS25 asks if Jamie and the TARDIS literally appear, if the story literally uses the words. If not, the page should be rewritten. No discussion follows at this time. We'll return to this page later.

The second story, which prompted the discussion, is When Times Change..., which, as you will note, is a red link and cannot be created. The full text of this story can be found at this edit, it's bundled with another story called The Two Brigadiers, as best I can tell. I'm not sure when this page is originally created, for obvious reasons. But it's deleted on July 18, 2017, and the post I linked to just there containing the text of it was on the 19th, along with the creation of The Two Brigadiers's page. So sometime around then sounds likely. The short story involves the Brigadier being sent a postcard from the 13th Doctor. We cover a story like this on the wiki already, see Postscript, and don't cover a similar story, called A Lady Doctor?. But the page was deleted without clear discussion, simply calling it fanfic and asserting that clearly Candy Jar lacked the rights to The Doctor.

---

I'm not entirely sure what caused User:Mythicia77 to respond to OS25 on Talk:Legacies, given that it was a month after the deletion of When Times Change..., I've been unable to find anything in the relevant time period - but respond they did.

So at the beginning of the discussion, the page referenced Victoria as one of the characters present in the story, and mentioned the TARDIS and Jamie in the continuity sections. This was likely improper, as OS25 noted and Mythicia agreed - none of these people were referred to by name, but alluded to by specific character details (Scottish boy, name of an English queen, etc). User:Revanvolatrelundar agrees and compares it to Toy Story. User:Amorkuz thanks people for explaining and deletes all the relevant content from the page, insisting that the situation is not similar to Faction Paradox, (and thus T:HOMEWORLD) but instead to Adventures in a Pocket Universe. This, in itself, would likely have been uncontroversial. However, Amorkuz went on to make a series of edits on other Candy Jar stories as a result of this decision, removing content that he considered unlicensed without further discussion. (See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) Many of these have since been reverted to greater or lesser extent, because Amorkuz was... overzealous, with one particular revert having the justification "The BBC have not copyrighted the concept of aliens attacking Earth on Christmas." One of these issues in particular caught the eye of User:Revanvolatrelundar, that of the Cosmic Hobo.


 * In regard to the question of "is the Cosmic Hobo the Doctor?". The short answer: of course he is. The Beast of Fang Rock contains several scenes where characters mention "the Do-" or similar, before the "Cosmic Hobo" alias is used, which is explained in-universe as a government alias for the Doctor, who they have noticed popping up several times over the course of the 20th century. While Amorkuz, you may stipulate that this is cannot be the Doctor due to rights reasons, the story (and others) specifically state that the "Cosmic Hobo" was the man whom Travers and Lethbridge-Stewart encountered in the London Underground, and who also appeared at Fang Rock in relation to the Horror of Fang Rock TV story. The series does hold the rights to the concepts and characters from these stories, and leave no shadow of a doubt that the Doctor is the character to whom they are referring. [...] The references to the Doctor are all what they should be, merely references, and leave no room for doubt that they are meaning the Doctor, with very clever use of the English language to emphasise this without violating copyright law. [Emphasis my own.]

The Death List (poem)

https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/User_talk:TheChampionOfTime#Lethbridge-Stewart

Contents (poem)

Discussion
=Etc vs Et al: WIP=

Opening Post
To dreeeeeeeaaaaaammmmmmm the impossible dream.

Discussion
=Invalidity: Curse of Fatal Death: WIP=

Discussion
=Category:Non-heterosexual real world people: Probably good to go= If needed. I'd prefer JDPM to write this up.

Opening Post
Alright. So I would have preferred for User:JDPManjoume to have written this one up, as it's his baby, but the thread has moved up the docket and we're near the top of the list now. It's time for me to write an opening post where we can discuss this.

The issue began in July of 2021 when JDPM stated he was interested in creating OOU categories for real world non-het, non-cis people, as well as IU and OOU categories for PoCs on the list. As best I can tell, User:Epsilon the Eternal then created the categories Category:Non-heterosexual real world people and Category:Non-cisgender real world people in December of 2021. JPDM then brings up concerns about citations a month later, saying that everything should be rigorously sourced, and he was concerned that some of the pages were perhaps not quite as solidly sourced as he thought they should be.

This comment, however, prompted User:RadMatter (no longer with us) to respond, insisting that the category simply isn't needed.
 * Why must we divide people due to their sexuality or gender identity?

Now, I maintain that this comment is in express violation of T:BOUND, as this specific reasoning was litigated extensively in the thread that established the existence of in-universe categories for the groups in question - with the reasoning found to be unconvincing. But it generated quite a lot of discussion. For those who wish to read the entire discussion, you may do so at Category talk:Non-heterosexual individuals. However, I will summarize the discussion, as I understand it, for the purposes of this thread.

Arguments in favor

 * 1) These categories are useful for research. Those who are looking into subjects such as these will find them tremendously helpful to have all of the information in one place.
 * 2) These categories are helpful because they serve to highlight all the people who are part of minority groups, show that they're an integral part of the history of Doctor Who, and for those who are members of these groups and feel isolated, they can feel more connected through this.
 * 3) Noting that certain writers, for instance, are members of a minority group can influence how you read their work and provide important context for understanding the perspective they're approaching subjects from. For example, Patrick Ness, Juno Dawson, or Paul Magrs.

Arguments against

 * 1) While it's true that those conducting academic research might be interested in using these categories, so too will people researching minority groups in order to harm them. There's a very real possibility for abuse here, and we can't control what people do with the information being gathered.
 * 2) More specifically, people in some of these marginalized groups have expressed their hesitations in these categories existing for this reason, and that should be enough motivation for us to remove the category.
 * 3) We shouldn't divide people based on categories like gender identity or race or what have you, it makes these minority statuses seem like they're not "the norm".
 * 4) Categories have second class status to articles on this wiki anyhow. If a category is causing problems, the simplest thing to do is delete it and work on making the articles in question better.
 * 5) These categories will always be incomplete, given how many people have contributed to the franchise over the past 60 years.
 * 6) If we place someone into these categories incorrectly, that's potentially libelous and/or catastrophic depending on their specific situation.

Keep

 * User:JDPManjoume - Supports Favor 1 and 3, I believe also Favor 2.
 * User:Dmitriy Volfson - Very much in favor of Favor 2.

Delete

 * User:RadMatter - Against 1 and 2.
 * User:Jack "BtR" Saxon - Against 2. But also comments on a specific example where someone wishes for their information to be removed from their page. (Which I think even those in favor of keeping the page are in favor of.)
 * User:Scrooge MacDuck - Against 1, with emphasis on 1.1 and I guess implicitly Against 3, since he seems to think that the proper solution is to make Queer representation in Doctor Who an even more robust page.
 * User:Chubby Potato - Against 1.
 * User:LauraBatham - Against 1, 4, and 5.

Ambiguous

 * User:Epsilon the Eternal - Bounces back and forth. Supports Favor 1, then Against 1, then his very last comment seems to indicate that he sees no daylight between the category and Queer representation in Doctor Who.
 * User:OncomingStorm12th - Supports Favor 2, but only comments at the beginning of the discussion, before it really gets going.
 * User:SOTO - Not really buying RadMatter's arguments, but doesn't explicitly comment on the overall topic, and this was before the discussion really got going.
 * User:BastianBalthazarBux - Suggests a compromise to delete the category but keep the citations, but doesn't really engage, not clear if he thinks this is the best idea or just a compromise between the options being discussed.
 * User:Shambala108 - Seems to be leaning against based on Against 3. Isn't really explicit with her thoughts and more comments on technical issues.
 * User:Bongolium500 - Seems to be hinting towards Against 3, but not explicit, it's all of one comment in a response to Epsilon.

I note as well that there's been some discussion of this on twitter, both for and against.

Cards on the table, what do I think? I think the arguments in favor are decently strong? The one concern is Against 1. There's just no way around it, there's a lot of violence against people in minority groups, and people in these groups have an understandable worry about violence. So we have to ask, does this category meaningfully increase risk? I'm not sure. It's a real tricky question. All of the information we're using is going to be publicly available anyhow, we're not outing anyone. It's just the centrality of the information that will be a concern. But quite a bit of the information is already present at Queer representation in Doctor Who, so I'm not entirely convinced that this category meaningfully contributes to violence. (Now, categories for other minority groups that we might not have such pages for might very well do so. We don't have extensively sourced pages for disability representation in DW just yet, for instance. That's a more complicated question. But these particular two categories don't seem to me to be much of an issue.) I think with proper sourcing and the ability to opt out we're probably handling this the best we can as far as what we're actually responsible for.

The question then becomes, from Against 1.1, whether the worries of the people in these groups are themselves reason to remove the categories, even if the worries in this particular instance are slightly misplaced. And that's a nuanced topic with no obvious answer. There are similarities here to our previous discussion on slurs, except that there's notable disagreement within the marginalized groups as to the benefit of these categories.

I don't think much of Against 5 or Against 4, to be completely honest with you. Against 5 is predicated on the idea that we're not following proper procedure for this category, which assumes malpractice on the part of wiki editors. By this standard we should change all our rules because if they're followed incorrectly bad things can result. Against 4 is true for all of our pages. These comments are trivialities not unique to this situation.

Against 3 is true, but does not in itself constitute reason to delete a category.

Against 2 is, I maintain, a violation of T:BOUND / T:POINT. We discussed this for months in the thread that instituted IU categories for non-het and non-cis individuals. It wasn't found to be a compelling reason to stop the creation of those categories. If we discuss it in relation to this issue it will absorb the entire discussion, still take months, get us absolutely nowhere, and resolve absolutely nothing. The argument proves too much, if it were to be successful it would also require us to delete our IU categories for non-cis / non-het individuals based on the exact same arguments presented at the time, which is a clear violation of T:POINT. This particular argument cannot be made, imo, without violating wiki policy. All of the others are kosher, just this one has issues. (As a result, we also shouldn't discuss Favor 2, as these are two sides of the same coin. The wiki has decided that categories like these, ceteris paribus, are acceptable. The reasons for this decision shouldn't be discussed because it will get us absolutely nowhere.) (Of course, I say this as a non-admin. If an admin likes, they can endorse these terms of discussion in this thread.)

Now, that's just me. But, full disclosure, I do find Against 1 to be worrying. I think this is a thorny issue and ultimately we need to discuss it in a systematic manner. I know I sound like a broken record at this point "we need more time, we should ask for opinions from the broader community", but I think both of these things are true for this issue as well. It's an issue where a lot of people will have thoughts, and it's going to be contentious. idk man. This is probably the opening post I've written where I'm the least confident.