Tardis talk:Tardis Manual/Archive 1

All of the following comments refer to a version of the page that no longer exists. This page used to house what was called a "Manual of Style", from which we have largely distanced ourselves. Thus, they may have some bearing on other pages, but generally they are of little use in understanding Tardis:Tardis Manual. 06:51: Fri 21 Sep 2012

Preliminary consensus
These are items that we seem to have reached a preliminary consensus on. However, things are still very fluid, so if you disagree or have something to add, please don't hesitate to click on "edit" and put your own comments below the specific entry you're discussing.--Josiah Rowe 02:25, 26 Mar 2005 (EST)

Point of view
Articles about people, places, or things in the Doctor Who universe should be primarily written from the perspective of an all-knowing reference source in that universe. Imagine if the collected knowledge of the Matrix (the Amplified Panatropic Computer Network, not the Keanu Reeves movie) could be put into a wiki format. That's what we're aiming for.

Production information
Information about the "real world"/production information (e.g. the reason why Leela's eyes changed colour in "Horror of Fang Rock") can be included in one of two ways: either indented, in italics, in the main body of the article, or in a separate section at the end of the article. If you choose the latter, there is no need to put the information in italics.
 * This is an example of a production "aside" within an article.

I don't really like the idea of putting production information into the main body of the articles. Having looked at some entries on Memory Alpha I think it makes the articles more difficult to read and breaks the flow of the story if people want to read the fiction only accounts. Personally I think wherever possible we should try to put the production information at the bottom of the page. --Amxitsa 05:03, 26 Mar 2005 (EST)

Cite your sources
Every major fact in an article should be sourced, if possible. The best way to do this is with a parenthetical citation at the end of the relevant sentence. Television stories should be cited in quotation marks ("City of Death").

British vs. American spelling and usage
Freethinker suggests "contributors use whatever conventions they are most familiar and comfortable with, while members from the UK, Australia, etc. reserve the right to edit entries to conform to standards of British English if they choose". Here's a link to the relevant bit of Wikipedia's Manual of Style. I don't have a strong opinion on this, although since Doctor Who is a British institution it makes sense to default to UK spellings and usages ("programme" rather than "program"). --Josiah Rowe 02:25, 26 Mar 2005 (EST)


 * For what it's worth, the Doctor Who WikiProject at Wikipedia has decided on using British spellings, as stated here.

--Freethinker1of1 21:12, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Capitalization in article titles
Over at the Panopticon we've had two votes for Title Case (e.g. List of Audio Stories): Mantrid and Amxitsa, and two for Sentence case (e.g. List of television stories): Freethinker1of1 and Stardizzy. My vote is for Sentence case, on the model of Naming conventions (capitalization). But a majority of one isn't a consensus or a mandate, no matter what the President thinks. We can talk this out some more before we start moving articles.--Josiah Rowe 02:25, 26 Mar 2005 (EST)

More on production information
Should we have a recommended title for the behind-the-scenes/real world information in our "Doctor Who universe" articles? ==Production information== or ==Additional information== or something else? Or should we just see what evolves as entries get written?--Josiah Rowe 02:25, 26 Mar 2005 (EST)

My vote would be for a title of == Production Information == --Amxitsa 05:31, 26 Mar 2005 (EST)

Additional citation styles
My feeling is that novels should be in italics, and audio stories in quotation marks: Just War, but "The Chimes of Midnight". Anyone disagree? --Josiah Rowe 02:25, 26 Mar 2005 (EST)

I dont have any problem with quoting stories in this way, I'm just curious as to why? What about quoting other sources, such as Bernice Summerfield, Faction Paradox, etc. I would suggest using italics as well e.g. City of the Saved --Amxitsa 05:33, 26 Mar 2005 (EST)


 * That's fine. I didn't mean to limit what could be cited, just to suggest appropriate citation formats for the different media. If we adopt this standard, we could cite Benny or Faction Paradox books/audios in the same style: The Book of the War and Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Glass Prison, but "Professor Bernice Summerfield: Death and the Daleks" and "The Faction Paradox Protocols: The Eleven Day Empire". --Josiah Rowe 16:17, 28 Mar 2005 (EST)

New In-universe format
I just have a few questions about the new format for the In-universe articles. I can't see an other problems yet in the format. Good job. -Azes13 23:40, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Shouldn't the stub be at the bottom, above Category and below External Links?
 * 2) Do we really need both Appearances and Sources? I'm not sure where they wouldn't overlap (since most information is gained from the serials and such)
 * 3) When would the See also not be shown with hyperlinks in the article? If there's another important article, I'm sure you'd mention it in this one.

Additions to the MoS
I originally posted these straight to the MoS, but since these are major additions I thought I would seek opinion first before making them "official":

Acceptable sources
Generally speaking, most professionally published sources are fair game, with added weight given to sources with direct connection to the Doctor Who franchise, such as press releases from the BBC, Doctor Who Magazine, and interviews/columns/other material written by individuals directly connected with the show, such as writers, producers and actors.

However, Doctor Who also attracts a large amount of media coverage that is dubious in its accuracy. Of particular concern is so-called "tabloid press" coverage in the UK, which is often fraught with inaccuracies and/or unsubstantiated rumors cited as fact. Care should be taken, both in biographical real-world articles and in-universe articles, that the source cited is actually accurate. For example, tabloid press in the UK widely reported that Kylie Minogue was to play a Cyberman in TV: Voyage of the Damned. More recently, a tabloid put forth the claim that Claire Bloom's character in TV: The End of Time was the Doctor's mother, despite Russell T Davies stating in podcast commentary that the identity has been left ambiguous.

As noted above, some sources should not be considered authoritative due to lack of review. These include Wikipedia, the Internet Movie Database, and fan forums and BBSes. Use of material from these sources is not prohibited, but effort should be made to find reputable sources as soon as possible.

Neutral point of view
As this wiki is effectively a large fan site, it can be difficult to maintain a neutral point of view about contentious issues, whether discussing a discontinuity or error on an episode page, or avoiding superlatives - or criticisms - in biographical pages. Such language should be avoided, or if desired, a source should be provided. For example, point-of-view writing might be: "Romana I was a beautiful companion"; if one wanted to make the same point, but do so in a neutral way, one might write "Romana I had long dark hair and the Doctor once acknowledged that she was physically attractive (TV: The Pirate Planet)". Other descriptors which may fall into the category of "matters of personal taste" should be avoided: "The Eleventh Doctor has an annoying voice", for example, unless a story establishes this to be a fact (i.e. a character makes reference to this), in which case the comment could be made, with a story citation.

A unique aspect of this Wiki's treatment of Discontinuities and Errors sections is that editors can add possible rationales, explanations, and even rebuttals to errors cited by others. This section, however, is not a forum, and therefore avoid statements like: "I think you're wrong". Instead, either edit the comment to reflect the correct information, or write something like: "Another possible explanation is...". When applicable, cite sources when posting rebuttals/corrections in these sections.

Talk pages
Although Talk Pages don't need to follow the same strict style and content guidelines as article pages, there are still some rules that should be observed.

First, Talk Pages should be used only for discussion on how to improve/change the article in question. Discussion of personal opinion regarding a story or individual should not be included on a talk page, except in discussing whether a certain piece of information should be corrected or changed. Discussion of rumors outside the context of whether to include/remove from the article, should also be avoided.

Also, the guidelines above regarding articles on living people also apply to talk pages. Material that is libellous or defamatory must be removed immediately.

Otherwise, however, deletion of other people's comments and threads is considered vandalism. Similarly, changing other people's posts beyond simple spelling error correction is not allowed unless you first get the original poster's permission.

If no one objects to these additions, I'll put them into the article shortly. 23skidoo 20:31, January 17, 2010 (UTC)

The major things I've altered is making the Neutral point of view section a little more general in its opening sentence, calling this wiki a fan site opens it up for stuff like fan fiction etc, so I'd rather not use the phrase "fan site" anywhere. I've also edited the latter part of the NPOV to adjust how editors add information regarding the Discontinuity section. What we don't want in the Discontinuity section is speculation, so we should be encouraging phrases like "another possibility is...", any speculative language shouldn't be in these sections. (It says as much in Tardis:Format for Television Story Entries )

As for the Talk pages section I've just added 'article' to the first sentence. I've also removed the part regarding editing an editor's spelling on their talk page (whether it's correct or not doesn't matter it's the editor's words).

See below for changes: --Tangerineduel 13:16, January 18, 2010 (UTC)

Neutral point of view
As this wiki is often written by dedicated fans, it can be difficult to maintain a neutral point of view about contentious issues, whether discussing a discontinuity or error on an episode page, or avoiding superlatives - or criticisms - in biographical pages. Such language should be avoided, or if desired, a source should be provided. For example, point-of-view writing might be: "Romana I was a beautiful companion"; if one wanted to make the same point, but do so in a neutral way, one might write "Romana I had long dark hair and the Doctor once acknowledged that she was physically attractive (TV: The Pirate Planet)". Other descriptors which may fall into the category of "matters of personal taste" should be avoided: "The Eleventh Doctor has an annoying voice", for example, unless a story establishes this to be a fact (i.e. a character makes reference to this), in which case the comment could be made, with a story citation.

A unique aspect of this Wiki's treatment of Discontinuities and Errors sections is that editors can add rationales and explanations, based on information from the story or the story's production. Rebuttals may also be added to errors cited by others. This section, however, is not a forum, and therefore avoid statements like: "I think you're wrong". Instead, edit the comment to reflect the correct information; when applicable, cite sources when posting rebuttals/corrections in these sections.

Talk pages
Although article Talk Pages don't need to follow the same strict style and content guidelines as article pages, there are still some rules that should be observed.

First, Talk Pages should be used only for discussion on how to improve/change the article in question. Discussion of personal opinion regarding a story or individual should not be included on a talk page, except in discussing whether a certain piece of information should be corrected or changed. Discussion of rumours outside the context of whether to include/remove from the article, should also be avoided.

Also, the guidelines above regarding articles on living people also apply to talk pages. Material that is libellous or defamatory must be removed immediately.

Otherwise, however, deletion of other people's comments and threads is considered vandalism. Similarly, changing other people's posts is not allowed unless you first get the original poster's permission. --Tangerineduel 13:16, January 18, 2010 (UTC)

--- All these changes look good to me. 23skidoo 20:33, January 23, 2010 (UTC)

Tenses Of Ongoing Objects
I think that objects that are in regular use by the Doctor and retain thier funtions such as the TARDIS and the Sonic Screwdriver should be exceptions to the past tense rule. This is because they are with the doctor at all times and thus part of his current ongoing timeline. These objects are unlikely to loose functions at any point and as such I feel that all functions of the TARDIS and Sonic Screwdriver, excluding obsolete models, should be treated as current events and thus be in present tense. Another exception to this of course is the future model of the sonic screwdriver which should have it's known functions in future tense as the Doctor is going to aquire it and is thus part of his own timeline's future. Pharap 18:30, September 26, 2010 (UTC)
 * Your best bet is actually to start a discussion on the panopticon forum. There, you should list your points as to why it should be changed, but I have to say, what you are talking about would involve a colossal amount of work. --The Thirteenth Doctor 21:03, September 26, 2010 (UTC)
 * The POV is as if we're watching past events, therefore, nothing is current. Your suggestion of altering it so that "currently used items" are in present tense would create a great deal of work whenever a doctor changes or such. For example, the recent change from tenth doctor to the newest. That would just create a large amount of work for no particular reason. -- sulfur 20:10, September 27, 2010 (UTC)


 * @ 13th Doctor - Ok, if I can find it, I will start it. It would take alot of work but it would only acount for tools that haven't been destroyed (ruling out some sonic screwdriver models, all non-doctor TARDISes, the De-mat gun and similar gallifreyan technology that there is no evidence of currently existing) and the gap between series would be a prime moment to make these changes. The only major changes after the initial one would be when something is destroyed or a new model is introduced


 * @ Sulphur - I'm sure there are some articles that contain present tense, such as the Doctor, who is the most current of all things. It would'nt create a deal of changes during regeneration as the Doctor doesn't stop using tools or get new ones just because he regenerates. The latest regeneration was an exception as the production team wanted to change everything to truely regenerate the show. Pharap 21:01, September 27, 2010 (UTC)


 * I hope that you don't mind, but I took a quote from your talk page conversation about this:
 * I mean, you wouldn't go on wikipedia and find an article about mars bars saying 'mars bars were a confectionary treat made by the mars company' whilst they are still in production. I know Doctor who isn't set in one time zone, but any object on the Doctor's person or in his TARDIS is to him a currently existing object and he would refer to it in the present tense frequently. It just seems to make more sense is all.
 * That's why an explicit point of view was chosen, specifically that all episodes, stories, etc were to be viewed as historical artifacts. So that everything would be the same. Wikipedia is from the POV of right now because it is all about the real world. Doctor Who is fictional, and thus we get to argue about a fictional universe and what POV we're supposed to have when viewing it. Yes, a Mars bar on Wikipedia is in the present tense because it is current from their POV. The sonic screwdriver is in past tense because the POV is of someone viewing a large chunk of historical records of some dude who called himself "the Doctor." -- sulfur 21:20, September 27, 2010 (UTC)


 * Firstly, I do mind, as that was not aimed at you. Secondly if such is the case then surely it is logical to mark every article as being fictional eg starting it with the words 'in the doctor who universe' or '.... is a fictional...'. And that is an illogical way to do things considering Doctor Who is an ONGOING franchise/series. Pharap 21:31, September 27, 2010 (UTC)


 * It was in response to a discussion about the specific thing here, and as such, it is relevant to the conversation. Secondly, yes, the wiki is dealing with a fictional universe, but treating it as if it really happened and is not fictional. This is not Wikipedia, and as such, there should be no reference to "in the doctor who universe" or "is a fictional". If we were writing these articles for Wikipedia, those would be required. Here, not so much. The same thing applies on other wikis such as Memory Alpha and Memory Beta (the two big Star Trek wikis). The choice of these particular wikis is to document the world of Doctor Who and Star Trek (respectively) from within that universe. Not like Wikipedia would document a TV series. -- sulfur 21:48, September 27, 2010 (UTC)


 * Don't care, you asked if I minded, that requires an opinion as a response, i gave you my opinion nad my reason for it. From what time zone are we looking in from then? Cause If everything is in past tense then the universe would have to have ended. Pharap 22:03, September 27, 2010 (UTC)


 * Sure. The Universe is over.  That works just find.  Secondly, please do not change indenting on comments from other people.  It makes the discussion much harder to follow when you line everything up to be at the same indenting level. -- sulfur 22:13, September 27, 2010 (UTC)


 * Firstly, Pharap, it was a rhetorical question and it is a commonly used phrase, not a direct question.
 * Secondly. This wikia is first and foremost an encyclopaedia of Doctor Who. We have decided to have everything in-universe (other than the obvious ones like actor pages) and that debate was settled. The one thing we must make sure we do is have consistency in our in universe articles. We can't have some which are in present tense and others which are in past. The main view I try to make sure all people understand is, we are writing this as though it is the end of the universe, and we are documenting it's entire history. --The Thirteenth Doctor 22:15, September 27, 2010 (UTC)

Masculine/Feminine form of Actor
In almost every article, the term Actor is used to describe the person who acts the role of a character, even if they are the female. Since the correct feminine form of Actor is Actress - much like Comedian and Comedienne - should the form in articles in which the character's role is played by a female be changed Actress or remain as Actor? Pharap 22:57, April 30, 2011 (UTC)


 * The generic term "actor" can refer to either a male or female, and is always grammatically correct to use. Usage of the feminine term "actress" to refer to a female actor is grammatically correct as well, though in terms of political correctness such usage has begun to fall from favour in recent decades. Rob T Firefly 22:59, September 4, 2011 (UTC)

Image use policy
Could we please have a link to Tardis:Image use policy added to the relevant section on this page? Rob T Firefly 22:52, September 4, 2011 (UTC)

Crediting the Doctor
Going by T:CAST, does that mean for the First through Fourth and Ninth Doctors, we should credit the televised Doctor as "Doctor Who"/"Dr. Who", or should an exception be made to that to avoid confusion? -- Tybort (talk page) 23:37, March 15, 2012 (UTC)

TARDIS and Tardis
I agree that in all DWU references, the time machine should be written TARDIS. But can we make an exception for the ship built by Peter Cushing's Dr. Who? In those movies, Tardis is presented as the name of the ship, not the type of craft it is (presumably it's unique). I think that the distinction between "Susan returned to the TARDIS" and "Susan returned to Tardis" is a rather nice way to distinguish the two universes. —Josiah Rowe talk to me 18:14, June 7, 2012 (UTC)


 * No exception, see Tardis:TARDIS and Talk:TARDIS (Dr. Who and the Daleks). Shambala108 ☎  13:49, July 27, 2019 (UTC)

Time Lady
Akin to the discussion on "actress" above, do we have a policy on the use of the term "Time Lady" to refer to Romana, the Rani and so forth? Was the term actually ever used in the series? —Josiah Rowe talk to me 18:16, June 7, 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, City of Death, part 1, by Fourth Doctor of Romana. But Time Lord is also used throughout DWU sources and is by far the more common. "Time Lady" is, understandably, more of a 1970s thing.   06:48: Fri 21 Sep 2012