Forum:Temporary forums/Subpage policy

For a long time, the "Policy" section on my user page has listed a broad array of my concerns and suggestions. Over the months and years, I've come to realize that many of these could be addressed by a singular proposal: the establishment of a proper use of subpages on this wiki.

Tardis:Changing policy specifies that the forums are required for changing policy, so given their longstanding absence, our admins might be inclined to put this proposal on the back burner. But this is not a change to how we do things; it is merely a clarification of another, existing option – the longstanding precedent of Doctor Who Magazine/1985 – in a way that allows it to be applied to more pages. In fact, not only does this proposal detract nothing from our policies or precedent, it will allow us to enact existing policies which are currently not enforced!

As a result, forums are not necessary to enact this proposal. Given how it will clearly bring us into much closer alignment with FANDOM best practices and our goal of serving readers, my hope is that it will be swiftly approved to open these possibilities for our editors and readers.

Proposal
It's simple: when a page grows too big, consider splitting it using subpages!

When to create a subpage
Subpages are usually only meant to be linked to from their root page and navigation templates. For instance, Twelfth Doctor - list of appearances is only linked to from Twelfth Doctor and, making it an obvious candidate for a subpage.

Subpages should be named after section headers, usually those with headings formatted with ==, such as "Biography" or "Plot". Subpages should never have in-universe titles: for instance, if the subsection Twelfth Doctor were deemed too big, we would move it to a section on Twelfth Doctor/Biography, not Twelfth Doctor/Continued adventures with Clara.

These are some examples of subpage names, as proposed in the "Applications" section below:
 * BBC New Series Adventures/Covers
 * The Daleks' Master Plan (TV story)/Plot
 * Twelfth Doctor/Biography
 * Twelfth Doctor/Personality
 * Twelfth Doctor/Appearances
 * Twelfth Doctor/Other realities
 * Twelfth Doctor/Invalid sources
 * Time Lord/Name

Alternately, if you think some material represents a self-contained idea that other articles might want to reference as well, consider splitting it without using subpages. For instance, when conflicting accounts of the Doctor's origins on First Doctor became too unwieldy, I created The Doctor's early life. Other examples include pages for specific eras in the Doctor's life, like Exile on Earth, or pages for specific events, like Operation Mannequin. This decision is an art, not a science, and experienced users should use their best judgment to decide how to group content together into logical topics.

Here are some examples of when not to use a subpage:
 * Third Doctor/Exile on Earth – instead create Third Doctor/Biography or Exile on Earth
 * The Doctor/Sonic screwdriver – instead create The Doctor's sonic screwdriver
 * Last Great Time War/Origins – instead create Origins of the Last Great Time War
 * The Master/Missy – instead create Missy!

Moving material
Once you've identified a lengthy section and the new page that will hold it, cut the section's contents and paste it to the new page. Include any subheadings, images, galleries, footnotes, and infoboxes that are inside that section. Subheadings should be adjusted upwards: for instance, === subheadings should become == s. Any redirects to the sections you've moved should be updated.

Writing a summary
After moving material to another page, you have to fill the gap on the root page. Fandom's Editor Experience team explains the  method in this way: "When a basic article becomes long enough, it could have long chunks that could reasonably be split into their own independent articles. … The base article could then replace a long section with a spoiler-free summary with the most important points, linked by a context-link hatnote above it (such as )."

- Isaac Fischer

In effect, replace the copied text with a shorter summary of the same information and a link to the new page. Just as a lead paragraph summarises the contents of its page, this summary should give a broad-strokes overview of the subpage's contents, with a particular emphasis on the most relevant details. A general rule of thumb is to mention all major appearances as well as any notable minor appearances. The line between "major" and "minor" is up to editors' discretion.

For instance, take Tenth Doctor. If it were moved to a subpage, the summary left behind might cite all of the Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones' major adventures, such as their televised ones, but not all of their minor adventures, such as PROSE: Wetworld or COMIC: The Skrawn Inheritance. Similarly, it would mention the Tenth Doctor's companions Gabby Gonzalez and Cindy Wu from the multi-year COMIC: Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor arc, but maybe not his minor companions such as Emily Parr or Rok Ma.

Tenth Doctor is another lengthy section. It details each of the Tenth Doctor's various clothing and hairstyle changes. If this information were moved to a subpage, the summary would describe his major outfits – for instance, those worn on television or for an entire comics run or Big Finish boxset – and any particularly notable minor outfits, such as his lei from The End of Time.

Note the Editor Experience team's emphasis on a summary being "spoiler-free". While this may not be possible in some circumstances, ideally a new fan should be able to read the summary of a character's biography without having the experience of the stories being totally spoiled for them. For example, a summary of Twelfth Doctor/Biography might mention that his travels with Bill, Nardole, and Missy concluded in TV: The Doctor Falls during an encounter with, without explicitly spelling out that enemy's identity or the circumstances of Bill's fate. Like a lead paragraph, a well-written summary should "lead" its readers to want to learn more, whether that means clicking through to the subpage or actually experiencing the stories in question.

Applications
There are a number of disparate problems that this proposal will solve. This section discusses those problems and the motivations for this proposal.

Subpage-like pages
Many articles on this wiki are already written like subpages. Our 1000+ lists of appearances are perfect examples of subpages in both purpose and execution: The only problem is that … well, they're not actually subpages! We've been using a dash instead of a slash for no reason. Twelfth Doctor - list of appearances, to name of one of many, should be moved to Twelfth Doctor/List of appearances.
 * 1) when a page section (the infobox list of appearances) grows too large and unwieldy, it's moved to a separate page;
 * 2) the new page is titled in reference to the core page (Character name - list of appearances); and
 * 3) the core page retains a summary of the most important information (first mention, first appearance).

You might ask, "Why are subpages better than the status quo? What are subpages, anyway?" Well, you're on one! Because of the slashes in the URL of this page, it's a subpage of both User:NateBumber and User:NateBumber/Sandbox, and as a result there are links to those pages at the top of this one, just below the title. This is great for navigation. Fandom's Editor Experience team explains, "Google understands that subpages have a distinct parent relationship with the base page. […] These subpages have a natural method to get back to the base article: they're linked from the top of the page!"

- Isaac Fischer

Additionally, a subpage can also be linked to from its parent page with only a partial title: if you're on Twelfth Doctor, the link  will take you to Twelfth Doctor/List of appearances. It's even more powerful than the pipe trick!

Our lists of appearances aren't our only subpage-like pages. We also have almost 100 "galleries" which function just like subpages; most of them are even already linked from story or series pages with. Their form should follow their function: BBC New Series Adventures covers should be moved to BBC New Series Adventures/Covers without hesitation.

I'm willing to bet that there are more examples, too. These are the low-hanging fruit when it comes to integrating subpages onto the wiki!

Story summaries
Tardis Wiki is notorious for our lack of plot descriptions. A vast majority of story pages have plot sections that say to be added. This is understandable: few editors actively enjoy typing out lengthy plot descriptions, and those who do often hold themselves to extreme standards of detail. But these to be added tags, many of them 15 years old or older, are a problem: according to the Editor Experience team, "Stubs do provide a bad experience because the readers and search engines that encounter them are left wanting more and an incomplete page (even if it is marked incomplete) has not been proven to "attract editors from the reader base to add to or expand the page" as was once assumed. Every day that a stub exists and remains incomplete is a day that bad experience persists."

- Isaac Fischer

Subpages offer us a way out. Rather than marking thousands of story pages as stubs just because they lack lengthy plot breakdowns, we should put these breakdowns (when we have them) on "Plot" subpages. This wouldn't even require a change to our preload templates! It would look something like this: Summary A brief, non-spoilery teaser that someone could use to check if they're interested in a story. If a publisher's summary is provided, this is where it would go, in which case the section is called "Publisher's summary". In rare cases where a great many publisher's summaries have been provided, such as Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks, this section may have a  link.

Plot

A short synopsis that someone could use to get a gist of a story or remind themselves of the plot. For an example, see Silver-Tongued Liars (short story). Unlike full plot descriptions, which tend to provide enough detail that one could experience the story without actually experiencing it (!), these shorter plot synopses could be written from memory without any editors needing to pause or relisten to take notes on every aspect of a story. Not only would synopses make our pages less likely to appear unfinished, their length would also make it easier for readers to scroll and access other sections on the page. All the while, readers interested in nitty gritty plot details would still be able to easily access that information when available by clicking to the subpage via.

Other realities
Doctor Who is notorious for its inconsistent treatment of time travel mechanics, and nowhere is this more apparent than in parallel universes and alternate timelines. What do these terms mean in Doctor Who? There are as many definitions as there are fans, and each one has a counterexample among our valid sources. Despite this, the wiki persists in different treatment of different types of different realities. T:MERGE semi-arbitrarily proclaims that "Continuity of consciousness is key", meaning that in cases of ongoing stories like Doctor of War, editors are left in limbo for months or years until they can see how (or if) the timeline resolves. This policy has led to nitpicky and counterproductive distinctions, such as the idea that Moira (The Pilot) wasn't a recurring character in series 10 because it was technically Moira (Shadow World) who appeared in Extremis. And all the while, the proliferation of split pages with strange dab terms means that many articles now bear below their infoboxes, increasing the glut of obscure material which readers must now scroll past to find a page's actual contents.

To our admins' credit, many of the more creative page splits – for example, Third Doctor (He Jests at Scars…) – have been diligently merged back into their originals, and Talk:Susan Foreman (Prologue: The First Doctor) provided a much-needed clarification that not all versions of characters from other realities deserve separate pages: "As a rule of thumb (there are exceptions, of course), if there's no more to say on the separate page than what can already be stated on the prime version's "Alternate timelines" subsection, it's not worth creating a separate page for the alternate-timeline version."

- Scrooge MacDuck

Scrooge's explanation hints at part of the reason we began splitting these pages in the first place: a page covering all of a major character's appearances in all realities (main and other) would simply be very lengthy!

Tenth Doctor/Other realities – not, as the section is currently called, but a title inclusive of parallel universes and pocket realities – would provide the space for this coverage. It would have room for separate sections discussing the character's appearances in alternate timelines, parallel universes, and other alternative constructs. Such a subpage would also provide a more suitable home for specialized templates like. It wouldn't remove the need for or existence of separate pages for many alternate versions of characters, but it would go a long way towards alleviating the pressure which has caused all this muddle in the first place!

Subpages might not be the silver bullet that solves this problem once and for all, but they do offer a more consistent path for addressing the issue.

Other validities
Death Comes to Time, which is currently invalid, depicts an alternative fate of the Seventh Doctor and Ace following Survival. We're meant to recognise these names: within this story, Ace is the same character who we met in Dragonfire, and her actions are shaped by her experience in The Curse of Fenric and other stories. This background is assumed as understood.

Now read our article for Ace (Death Comes to Time). There's no mention of her shared roots with regular Ace; in fact, there's no citation of any story besides Death Comes to Time itself. If you read the page in a vacuum, you could come away thinking she was one of Dan Freeman's original characters! To an extent, this is understandable: it would be very silly to duplicate half of Ace on two pages. But there's a better way.

Many pages for characters and concepts which appear very briefly in invalid stories, like George W. Bush, feature a "Behind the scenes" subsection called "Information from invalid sources". This is better than the Ace (Death Comes to Time) approach, since it establishes a clear link between the valid and invalid topics, but we understandably haven't chosen this route when it comes to major characters from invalid stories, since it would be cumbersome to cover that much material in a behind-the-scenes section.

You should know what's coming by now: in this case, Ace/Invalid sources, decorated by a helpful new template, tentatively named :

In Ace, a subsection called "Information from invalid sources" will briefly list or recap Ace's more prominent invalid appearances, with a link to the subpage covering Ace-related material in these invalid sources in maximum detail.

For those who dare to dream, this template-based approach would also unlock a new solution to another old problem: our coverage of concepts that originate in invalid stories but are referenced in valid ones. Right now we either shove most of these pages' material in their "Behind the scenes" sections, like on Canisian, or we jam our fingers in our ears and pretend we don't understand the obvious connection, like on Man with a bent nose. Using the above template on "invalid-first" pages like these – not on a subpage, but on the original thing! – would enable much better coverage of not just the Minister of Chance and friends but also crossover concepts like the Vivaldi inheritance or the Gwanzulum.

Biographies and leads
In Thread:264489, Shambala108 ruled that the biography sections on pages of "highly-recurring characters" should only have 2-3 sentences per story. This ruling was widely ignored – it hasn't been enforced on any page anywhere – and I believe that many, myself included, did not understand it at the time. But I have come to see the wisdom in Shambala's approach.

To quote the Editor Experience team a final time, "There's no one ideal length of an article; it should cover all the important and noteworthy points without being so lengthy that readers lose attention. While there is both clear and unclear research on the topic, an informational article should likely take about 7 minutes to read, and be somewhere between 1000 and 2500 words (not bytes). There are legitimate reasons for individual articles with 4000 - 5000 words of prose if they engage the reader and stay on-topic; beyond 5000 words, contributors should review a body of text for opportunities to summarize and break out potentially independent text into new articles."

- Isaac Fischer

Here on Tardis Wiki we fall hilariously short of this standard. Our pages Tenth Doctor and Eleventh Doctor are both over 60,000 words long, requiring (according to WordCounter.net) over 3 hours of reading time each – and it would be hard to argue that their prose is especially engaging. No person is sitting down and reading either of these pages in their entirety. And don't even mention The Master!

If Shambala's decision was implemented properly, we would see a dramatic reduction of these page lengths, but two problems would remain:
 * 1) the matter of what to do with all the material we'd be removing; and
 * 2) the fact that such a reduction would be nowhere near drastic enough to meet best practices!

Subpages would solve both problems. Biographies which are too long by Shambala's standard can be moved to subpages, rather than deleted outright; and the  method would unlock far larger potential reductions in page length.

As described in my above summary writing guide above, the information in a summary should be chosen for its relevance to the not we. I've received some pushback for this part of the proposal, but in actuality, it satisfies both the spirit and the letter of Tardis:Neutral point of view. Our entire purpose as a wiki is to cover DWU-related stories and concepts in whatever way will best serve DWU fans, and the reason we have T:NPOV is because long ago our admins judged it was the best way to achieve that purpose, not because promoting non-TV content is one of our priorities. A neutral point of view does not prevent us from realistically assessing what information is most relevant to our readers: otherwise it would be against the rules to use the "Main actor" variable in infoboxes!

This guideline has implications for lead paragraphs, as well. Peter Capaldi himself had such a hard time finding relevant information in our article on The Beatles that he ultimately gave up! I've since fixed the issue with that specific page by moving information about TV: The Chase from its 14th paragraph to its 2nd. Applying this approach more widely across the wiki will be huge for general usability.

Miscellaneous other cases

 * One of the biggest advantages of subpages is that they provide more room for not just ordinary coverage but also specific templates and sections. Subpages like Tenth Doctor/Appearance could have their own "Behind the scenes" sections discussing real-world information related to the topic.
 * There are thousands of orphaned images on this wiki illustrating characters and concepts. Per the ruling that DWM illustrations cannot be used to illustrate in-universe pages, many of these images cannot be used on their pages even if there was room for them. Gallery subpages for major characters would solve these problems by providing a "dumping ground" for images of a character or concept.
 * Chris Cwej's Superiors is one of many pages which shoehorn every once-used alternate name into the lead paragraph. These names do belong in the article, but the place for them is a "Name" section, such as we see on many Wikipedia pages; the actual lead paragraph should only mention the two or three more prominent names at most. For some cases where the naming discussion is particularly difficult, however, it might be appropriate to expand it into a subpage. Aliases of the Doctor represents an edge case here; due to its length and the fact that it's mostly linked through redirects, it might qualify for splitting into separate pages for individual aliases, such as Time's Champion and Time Lord Victorious.

Comments
If you have any feedback on this proposal, please feel free to add comments here or embed them in the text above with  '' tags. I reserve the right to incorporate, reject, and/or remove anything added to this page. – n8 (☎) 15:41, 19 September 2022 (UTC)''

I really, really like this proposal. It makes a lot of sense and seems like it would improve the experience both for the editor and the reader. I hope to see it implemented at some point soon. Bongo50  ☎  16:21, 20 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Thank you, and thank you for pointing out that ~ doesn't work in tags! I've updated my instructions here accordingly and fixed the typo you noted. – n8 (☎) 14:33, 21 September 2022 (UTC)


 * I think it might be worth deciding whether or not the first letter after the "/" should be capitalised because it does matter: User:NateBumber/Sandbox =/= User:NateBumber/sandbox. I think this should come down to where the slash trick will be used most often: places where the first letter should be capitalised, or places where it shouldn't. Do you have any thoughts? Bongo50   ☎  15:30, 21 September 2022 (UTC)


 * That's a great point. I'm going to say we should capitalize it, since most often I think these will be linked with rather than in-line. – n8 (☎) 17:07, 22 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Not a critique on this page, but how come an image from The Curse of Fatal Death is in ?  15:54, 4 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Great question! The  CSS class is clearly out-of-date. I've worked with an admin to change the image to something more appropriate. – n8 (☎) 17:07, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

I didn't come to read the new version of this to be personally attacked. Wow. I think splitting off plot summaries is something that could work, but I personally am very strongly against any split of TV/EU stuff, as I am with rewriting the pages to put it into the lead. Obviously this would come up in the forum discussions about it though. :> Najawin ☎  16:04, 4 October 2022 (UTC)


 * I hear your objection to prioritisation of TV content loud and clear. Obviously it's only a matter which would apply to "TV first" characters with extremely long pages – mainly the Doctors and their companions – so it wouldn't affect the pages which you and I are most fond of editing. But hopefully Special:Diff/3099698 isn't really so objectionable? I'm, uhh, rather hoping this can get done without needing the forums – which is to say, that it can get done ever – so please do respond. – n8 (☎) 17:31, 4 October 2022 (UTC)


 * I've added sections explicitly addressing these concerns using the examples of Tenth Doctor and Tenth Doctor, btw. – n8 (☎) 19:16, 4 October 2022 (UTC)


 * I think a better example to illustrate my qualms is Sutekh. This is an article with a substantial amount of EU content that's arguably integral page as we've written it. I cannot imagine that it's acceptable to rewrite this page to focus on the TV appearances of this character, or even what such a rewrite to this page could look like. Thankfully, this is one instance where the issue of subpages to trim excess content doesn't yet seem relevant, but the basic issue here is the same. It seems bizarre to me that, say, Anne Travers, could have her article rewritten to focus on a single story she appeared in on TV - were it to get too long. (Yes I did find a random character that Candy Jar was using, why do you ask?) Or even Kate Stewart, a character that originated in non BBC media, has an extensive life outside of the BBC show, whose rights are owned by someone other than the BBC. Her page is reasonably large. It's 211 on Special:LongPages. Which isn't super up there, but isn't nothing either. (Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart meets two of those three criteria! And his is 38 on LongPages!)
 * Perhaps it's an ideological issue for me and we'll just never agree. But this change seems counterproductive, in violation of both the spirit and the letter of T:NPOV. It seems like it provides fodder for those in the fanbase who want to relegate the expanded universe material to a second class status (though, of course, I know you don't intend this), which I'm strongly against, and the fact that Doctor Who doesn't do this is part of why I'm here.
 * But in all honesty I don't think this is the best way to help our users. What is the problem we're trying to solve? We want a way for people to find out what information comes from what sources easily, if they wish to do so, on mobile, quickly, where they might lack cmd+f, without privileging TV sources. Is there a way to do this? I think there has to be - and I think giving up and privileging TV sources is defeatist, no offense meant.
 * I'd like to propose an alternative. A change to T:BOLD. See User:Najawin/sandbox. I think this change makes it substantially easier for a user to scroll down a page looking for "TV" as a source for a statement. If need be, we might also float a proposal that prefixes be resized slightly. But I think this option is more in keeping with T:NPOV, can be automated by a bot, and serves the not we reasonably well, if not better. (Though I admit the last bit is a matter of ideological debate.) Najawin ☎  02:45, 5 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Defeatist? Bah! Humbug!


 * Thanks for explaining your point of view; I really appreciate the outside interpretation of what I've written. I think your disagreement is with the letter of what I've written, not its spirit, and I'll have to spend some time figuring out how to better capture and convey that spirit to avoid any kind of misunderstanding.


 * For instance: "It seems bizarre to me that, say, Anne Travers, could have her article rewritten to focus on a single story she appeared in on TV - were it to get too long." Yes, that would be bizarre. By "prioritise" I didn't mean "make her TV appearance the focus". I simply meant "a summary might omit her minor appearances in Lethbridge-Stewart short stories (say, any stories where she appears briefly or as a background character), but it should not fail to mention her appearance on TV, however minor". This does not mean that the TV story suddenly becomes the "focus", nor does it have any bearing on the presence of major non-TV content in the summary, as appropriate. Maybe there's a better word than "prioritise" to capture what I'm trying to say here.


 * I like your T:BOLD idea, but I don't think it's comprehensive enough to replace this proposal in its entirety, and it rather assumes a reader's familiarity with our prefixing system. Regardless, it might make for a good complement to Bongolium500's innovative source referencing proposals at User:Bongolium500/Sandbox 5! – n8 (☎) 14:54, 5 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Sandbox 5 is actually not up to date; it holds some very out of date early drafts. The up-to-date template currently has its documentation at User:Bongolium500/cite source. Bongo50   ☎  15:52, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

So I obviously love Bongo's proposal, but I do worry that even with the code cut down massively it might have the same "issue(s)" it ran into before (unless the template-ification gets around this completely). As for T:BOLD, it's obviously nowhere near comprehensive enough to solve all the problems mentioned. Just the plot summary issue alone can't be solved by this. :> The one part where I can see prioritizing TV stories "over" EU stories in the shorter summaries on the large pages is when you delineate the starting and ending periods for the section. EG, with the Twelfth Doctor could discuss how his adventures with Bill took place between Smile and Extremis, even though this isn't technically true. But I think as to the few paragraphs we use to describe the situation before linking to the larger article, we should reference all incidents from all media. But, say, the entire "Temporal Crisis" section on Twelfth Doctor could be summarized with a sentence. I do think it should be mentioned though. Now that I think about it, what you're proposing is a relatively radical change for how casual users will interact with some of our more prominent articles. That's not a bad thing, but it is something that I think we should get community feedback for. Perhaps (God help you) this is something you might want to make a mock up of and float as an idea on reddit or twitter and ask people for feedback, as well as asking their friends and family, to compare and contrast, say, the ease of use and understanding of, say, Tenth Doctor vs the Subpaged and Bolded Tenth Doctor. Najawin ☎  18:48, 5 October 2022 (UTC)


 * This isn't really the place to start discussing my template, but, to answer your concerns, the issues with SMW and performance that CzechOut mentions are now completely irrelevant. Not only was he actually misinformed to begin with (based my on discussions with other Fandom staff and wiki representatives), but one of my main priorities was optimising performance to the point that I got an extension enabled on this wiki to especially for this purpose. SMW will only be used rarely as a last resort backup. As for screen readers, I have tried testing this for myself but I do not use a screen reader so really struggled to test it. The one I used had quite a high learning curve! Ideally, someone who uses one regularly could help with testing. If there is a problem, I think that I have a solution that wouldn't be hard to implement.


 * On the topic of asking for feedback, good luck with that. I tried asking for some for my template and got very little. It's hard to make changes that help readers when readers don't want to give feedback... Bongo50   ☎  20:18, 5 October 2022 (UTC)


 * I'm glad to hear it! I really do like the template. iirc Epsilon edits on mobile? He made a lot of comments about it during the migration to UCP. And, yeah, getting feedback is hard, but Nate has some advantages here given the communities he has his fingers in. If he wants to do it, of course. Najawin ☎  20:32, 5 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Yeah, Nate is remarkably well placed in the various online Doctor Who communities. Bongo50   ☎  20:40, 5 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Any survey of "community feedback", however well placed I may be, would inevitably be biased towards unusually dedicated Who fans. But as it happens, we have something even better than any amateur survey: we have the studies cited by Fandom's Editor Experience team and the best practices guidelines laid out by that team, who are privy to much more detailed and unbiased traffic data than you and I! Through that intermediary, this entire proposal is motivated solely by community feedback. Suggesting that someone should be able to understand the Twelfth Doctor's life from start to finish in a single sitting – that's not a major change. It's just how our wiki is already supposed to work. How Thread:264489 requires it to work! All this proposal does is allow us to actually achieve the standards we're supposed to be holding ourselves to.


 * To return to your prior examples, do you earnestly disagree with my statement that a summary of, say, Sutekh's life would not be complete without mentioning Pyramids of Mars but might be complete without mentioning, say, The Wanderer? Or that Abslom Daak's cameo in series 8, however brief, is more relevant to his summary than his mention in The Secret Lives of Monsters? I don't think you do disagree, actually! But either way, please propose an alternative wording that would better capture what you suggest, and I'll work it in. – n8 (☎) 15:02, 6 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Well I did suggest friends and family, but you're not wrong. Even still though, given the criticism we get from some corners /cough/ twitter /cough/, it makes sense to me to seek feedback on a large change to user experience. But that's just me! Obviously you'd be doing the work (or an admin would), and it's just a suggestion.
 * As for the meat of the disagreement, again, I don't think we should exclude any instances in any media. All of these things are important! (I think the Abslom Daak cameo is important in a Behind the Scenes way, and could perhaps be highlighted there, which it is, but not especially in a Biography way.)
 * I'm inclined to keep The Wanderer if possible, in our hypothetical "the Sutekh page has gotten too big, let's summarize things and move to subpages" future, but I don't think that example shows what you want it to show. Sutekh doesn't appear in that audio, he's just referenced obliquely. I think in trimming down the page, if we have to cut things like that the delimiting factor wouldn't be that The Wanderer is EU and Pyramid of Mars is TV, it's that Sutekh isn't even explicitly mentioned in the former, he's just hinted at in a vision, along side many other things in a bunch of references to things we're supposed to recognize. Were this to happen on TV, in said hypothetical I would suggest trimming that from the page as well. Najawin ☎  16:09, 6 October 2022 (UTC)


 * I don't think we should exclude any instances in any media. All of these things are important!
 * Okay, thanks for spelling that out, I missed it the first time. It strikes me that a summary which includes all over the Tenth Doctor's ~600 appearances would hardly be a summary! But I digress. How would you feel about a compromise where rather than focusing on television so explicitly, I say that a summary should include "brief overviews of all a character's major appearances as well as any notable minor appearances"? This would capture the sentiment of what I'd intended while keeping T:NPOV the same and leaving wiggle room for the judgment of individual editors. – n8 (☎) 16:39, 6 October 2022 (UTC)


 * That's much more reasonable, but I'm still hesitant to use the "notable minor appearances" language, because in practice that will almost certainly prioritize TV over EU media. Najawin ☎  17:07, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

I don't feel that that should really matter. The whole purpose of this proposal, as I see it, is to make it easier for readers to find the information that they come here looking for. If that happens to be largely TV stories with a handful of more notable non-TV stories (e.g. Big Finish audios or Titan Comics material, but not the Doctor Who Adventures strip), so be it. As long as no information is removed (only moved to a different place), I only really feel that the wiki can gain in usefulness from this idea as information becomes quicker and easier to find.

Unrelated to this current discussion, but I've been thinking about the possibility of in-universe subpages having their own dedicated behind the scenes sections to allow them to go in depth on all aspects of the thing, not just the in-universe material. For example, a subpage on appearance, as well as detailing all of a character's costumes, ideally providing images of each where possible, could also feature a dedicated behind the scenes section on, say, the design process and other relevant production details. Would this work? Bongo50  ☎  18:08, 6 October 2022 (UTC)


 * But I'm just never going to be convinced on this point. Obviously if the consensus is against me, so be it. But it violates T:NPOV egregiously and I have strong ideological objections to it. I, quite frankly, do not care if users are looking for a fun little Easter egg where so and so expanded universe character is mentioned in the show as opposed to the reams and reams of EU material they have, in this hypothetical. I've proposed a way to make it easier for this hypothetical user to find the cameo, but at the end of the day there's only so much I think we should do. (Indeed, I actually believe that their experience of the show will be deepened by looking for these things, as mine was when I was watching the Smith era as a teenager. But I realize that this view is quixotic, and I'm perfectly willing to work to make some improvements. But I do draw the line at privileging TV sources in actual article writing.)
 * I actually like the BTS for subpage/appearance idea, there's some interesting tidbits related to the S5 costumes that should be documented more centrally than usually is. Najawin ☎  18:42, 6 October 2022 (UTC)


 * "Egregious"? Bah! Humbug! This proposal violates neither the spirit nor the letter of T:NPOV in any way. Are these the quotes you're thinking of?

"Give all media equal weight; television episodes are not "better sources" than comic strips or audios."

"One of the most important aspects of this wiki is that all media have equal weight here. Television is not the most important source of information on this wiki. That which is said in a short story in the 1967 Doctor Who Annual, or a Faction Paradox audio drama, is just as valid as the latest episode of BBC Wales Doctor Who."

- T:NPOV (emphasis mine)


 * Contrary to popular belief, the policy – considered carefully, in context – does not mandate that the wiki is a platform for promotion of non-TV material (which I refuse to call "EU"), nor does it prevent us from making a realistic assessment about how to make the wiki actually usable for once. Otherwise it would violate T:NPOV to use the "Main voice actor" variable in infoboxes! Rather, the policy merely ensures that no one can write something like

By one account, Felix Mather was President of the United States around 2010, (PROSE: Trading Futures) but this was wrong, because actually it was Barack Obama. (TV: The End of Time)
 * You'd have to really torture yourself to argue that minor appearances of a character being relegated to a subpage for the sake of summarisation somehow makes them any bit less valid than the major appearances, televisual or otherwise.


 * A few times since I began brainstorming this proposal, I've heard some romantic notion that fans are being drawn deeper into the franchise by stumbling across (say) the DWAs in Eleventh Doctor, and this would somehow no longer be the case on Eleventh Doctor/Biography. But actually, the fact of the matter is that right now no one is stumbling across anything in that section as it currently exists, because it's so unreadably large! You mention the Smith era – well, today Eleventh Doctor is about twice as long as it was at the end of the Smith era. A well-written summarisation, highlighting Eleven's major appearances across TV as well as other media, would actually bring us closer to that decade-old ideal than the page as it currently exists; and if I'm wrong, well, the subpage with the rest of the material will still be right there, a click away!


 * In any case, I love the BtS idea. One of the advantages of subpages is that they can hold more dedicated templates and infoboxes than exist on the main page; specialised "Behind the scenes" sections like Tenth Doctor/Appearances are a perfect application of that principle. – n8 (☎) 20:40, 6 October 2022 (UTC)


 * I actually think the first quote does imply that we need to treat EU material on exactly the same level as mainline TV show material. But I think it's clear we're just not going to agree on this point and we can leave it up to the consensus of the community. I think we there's a lot we can do to trim down pages without violating T:NPOV, and I've discussed some ways how, but I absolutely believe that

"Give all media equal weight; television episodes are not "better sources" than comic strips or audios."
 * implies that allowing "notable minor appearances" (ie, TV minor appearances being privileged, and then we toss in other things we think are notable) isn't allowed. Najawin ☎  22:06, 6 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Agree to disagree! – n8 (☎) 20:01, 10 October 2022 (UTC)