Forum:Temporary forums/Non-narrative fiction and Rule 1

Opening post
Alright. So. I'm going to be approaching this in a bit of a weird direction, attempting to build a historical case for a re-examination of this rule, where some of the history, is uh, not precisely available to us because it's in the deleted forums. With that said I think most of the relevant history takes place before the switch, so there's not much of a barrier here.

T:VS. The four little rules. At the end of the day I think no rule has caused more controversy than Rule 1. Perhaps there's some disagreement as to precise implementations of Rules 2-4, a la primary vs secondary rights holders, the, uh, Arcbeatle stuff, or our recent Rule 4 discussion. But no other rule, to my knowledge, has had people fundamentally question the very necessity of its existence. There are at least three proposals in these forums that touch on it, more, depending on how you count. It's a mess. And its history is just as messy. If you wish to move past that history and on to the argument built on the history, feel free to do so. But I think the historical analysis is important to understand how Rule 1 came to be, why it uniquely rankles so many, and why jettisoning it or reforming it would not be as radical a proposal as it first seems.

Historical background
The earliest relevant discussion is the original 2005 creation of the canon policy, which specifically disallowed the FASA roleplaying game (among others) on the basis that they "contain histories and other information which conflicts with the television and prose stories"). It also specifically disallowed websites, unless sourced from a valid source, though this policy doesn't seem to have considered the idea of in-universe websites given the phrasing, and stated that
 * The relevance of the Doctor Who Technical Manual, The Terrestrial Guide, The Doctor Who Monster Book and similar items and their suitability for use in creating and contributing to articles in the TARDIS Index File is unclear at this time, and up for discussion. [emphasis mine]

This was a proposed draft, (as stated at the top of the page), and discussion began at the original inclusion debates, but there simply was never discussion of this section. User:Boblipton brings it up 6 years later to subtly change the wording, and that's it. (OS25 else brings up discussion about reference works as a general category, but this too is ignored.) (I note that there's some ambiguity here, as User:Freethinker1of1 referenced discussions taking place at Tardis talk:Canon policy, which... seems to be redirected to these discussions during this time frame. So if there were other discussions we've just lost them?)

A small but interesting side note takes place in 2008 when someone asks about Search for the Doctor and it's clear that at this point interactive fiction isn't considered "non canon".

User:Scrooge MacDuck has pointed out that in late 2008 Forum:Canonicity of Dalek Annuals has some discussion on the relevant lines, as it expresses incredulity about specific facts in the non narrative sections of the work. But this thread closed either without clear resolution, or with a resolution that the Annuals were "canon", and the distaste here wasn't in any way based on a narrative/non-narrative distinction, but rather that the specific facts presented were outlandish and seemed to contradict other established fact. It seems similar as the above, a side note in the history.

In June of 2010, Forum:We need a policy on videogames attempts to nail down specific policies on games, noting that at this time Attack of the Graske is still canon, with User:CzechOut arguing that the policy at the time doesn't clearly explain why the FASA games aren't canon. There isn't clear consensus by the end of this discussion a year later, though it's important to note that a final postscript discussion includes the observation by User:Victory93 that the FASA game manuals aren't narrative, but the games are.

In March of 2011 User:Tangerineduel brings up the issue of the three works mentioned as being "unclear" in the canon policy since its very invention. Czech's response:
 * They're unclear because they contain material which could potentially be used on in-universe articles, but probably shouldn't be. That is, they contain information about, for example, the technical specs of K9 or the operation of the TARDIS, or details about the sonic screwdriver — a substantial amount of which has never been confirmed in any narrative. They also contain, in the case of The Terrestrial Index, the author's opinion as to the narrative history of the DWU, in much the same way that AHistory or The Discontinuity Guide will throw out pearls of "wisdom" about how certain in-universe things fit together. All these reference books are one step removed from the source material, the episodes themselves, and therefore make for potentially dangerous resources for in-universe articles. It's fine if you want to include information from these sorts of books in a behind-the-scenes section or on a story page. But I can't see the rationale for including the Technical Manual 's ideas of what makes the sonic screwdriver tick in the main body of sonic screwdriver. Primacy must be given to narrative works on in-universe pages.

This is later stated as the official line by Tangerine in 2011, that you need narrative sources. I am unable to find an actual discussion that enshrines this as policy, it simply seems to be how the statements from the original 2005 first draft were interpreted, even though User:CzechOut admitted that this isn't the actual reason for FASA being disqualified.

In early 2012 discussion about another video game commences. (This one is interesting for a variety of reasons, many parts of it have aged very poorly.) Interestingly, Czech insists that RPGs were thrown out years prior, and as stated, while this is true, at the time T:CANON still reflected that it was because they conflicted with the tv show or prose works. User:Tybort points this out, and they discuss whether RPGs should be covered generally. Search for the Doctor is discussed again, and there's disagreement as to whether or not it's similar. Tangerine makes the following comment:
 * I believe the origin of the FASA ban was that kinda like other in-universe non-narrative reference books it was believed that the FASA stuff was made up just so there'd be enough content for the FASA game. [emphasis mine]

(I note that I've not been able to find evidence for this in my dive through the forums, but it could well be true that this was the concern. But it's interesting to see how the slow marriage of non narrative in universe fiction and nonlinear storytelling came to pass in these discussions.) The next two comments from Czech are illuminating as well, and while they're too long to replicate in full, some choice bits:
 * To me, it's more that it's a lack of consistent narrative. [...] What I'm saying is that RPGs encourage and allow for fanfic, which is clearly not allowed. [...] More than that, you don't have to choose the missions (called rather stupidly "interventions") in a particular order, by and large. Which means for you, the game may progress from intervention a, to intervention d, to invervention c. For someone else, it might go in alphabetical order. Thus your "plot" is scrambled. I think that to include a particular story, i must be a story that progresses in the same way for everyone experiencing it.
 * The real reason for the ban must surely be that RPGs are internally unstable narratives. They don't come out the same each time you play them. So anything which happens differently each time you play it shouldn't be considered a part of our tardis.wikia.com canon, because we don't know which outcome to go with. This would mean things like the DYD and FYF books would also be slapped with a notdwu warning. I don't see anything wrong with saying: Only those narratives with a consistent narrative, experienced in the same way for all those that consume that narrative, may be considered a valid source for the writing of articles.

Eventually the discussion closed without clear resolution on larger policy concerns, though even the staunchest defender of the game sort of accepted that deeming the particular game non canon wouldn't be awful.

It gets a little weird here, because we need to look at a thread that seems to have nothing to do with our discussion. Forum:Inclusion debate: Death Comes to Time takes place beginning in May of 2012, and involves the following snippet from Czech:
 * For this reason, a process — which, incidentally, I did not personally invent — emerged whereby we occasionally examine a story or range to see whether it should be considered a valid source for the writing of in-universe articles. If there's evidence that the creators/copyright holders did not intend for the story to be a part of the DWU, or if there's a question about the story's legal status, we exclude it. Even though, again, I'm not the author of this process, I do approve of it. We have to have some mechanism for defining the wiki's scope, or we'd have no defense against fan fiction, obvious parody, and things which are explicitly meant by the author and/or copyright holder to be viewed as extra-continuous. [emphasis mine]

Here we see two of the four rules in T:VS, arguably three. Rule 1 is obviously absent. And, indeed, the first version of T:VS is written the next day. User:Josiah Rowe voices his approval for this rewrite of the canon system on that same day. Over the next two days the policy construction continues, first in the form of the 3 little rules and then the 4 little rules, adding in Rule 1 as the final rule. However, there's no discussion in said forum thread about Rule 1, the only discussion taking place being around a semi-narrative approach to validity, which is, again, very funny in hindsight.

In October of 2012 Forum:Decide Your Destiny and Find Your Fate are NOTDWU from here on out shifted the branching path stories to being not valid based on Rule 1 on the discussion of Czech and Tangerine alone, and that's the final relevant thread in the old panopticon to the issue of Rule 1.

Most everything else that could be relevant is in the deleted forums, but there are some bits of interest at Tardis talk:Valid sources, namely, Tardis talk:Valid sources and Tardis talk:Valid sources. I invite those interested to peruse, but it's the obvious criticisms that continue to be made to this day.

Recap
So what precisely happened? A draft of the canon policy was proposed, and it disqualified FASA because it contradicted other sources, and left other non narrative fiction in a weird middle ground. It was never discussed. At the time it wasn't trivial that interactive stories were at all similar. Discussion occurs concerning The Adventure Games, and there is no clear consensus. Even after this there is confusion as to how to interpret these passages in the canon policy, with User:Tangerineduel asking for clarification before adopting the "narrative primacy" stance. (Again, I note, with no discussion cementing this policy.) User:CzechOut attempts to clarify why the FASA books are invalid, suggesting that it's because they're interactive narratives, but there is no clear consensus. Finally, when T:VS is created, the four little rules spring into existence, and there is no discussion of any of them save Rule 4.

By no means am I suggesting wrongdoing here. Very much the opposite, I think Czech's attempt to pin down the precise reason for why FASA was ruled invalid was the correct call, even if I ultimately disagree with his reasons the entire way through. The creation of T:VS was a herculean effort, and should be applauded as a great step forward in how we approach discussions on this wiki. And it's important to realize that under T:BOUND he was actually codifying the rules of the wiki!

But at the same time it's a rule that nobody actually ever really agreed to. It just sort of congealed out of a few other bits of policy that went unquestioned for far too long and were, quite frankly, bad. It's time to re-examine Rule 1 with fresh eyes.

The case for repeal
Quite frankly, I don't think that User:Vultraz Nuva's concerns at Tardis talk:Valid sources were ever adequately addressed.
 * [elsewhere] reference works are treated as valid sources depending on their content--in-universe or behind-the-scenes. The aforementioned books contain both, but it shouldn't take a well trained person to distinguish the two where they're together [...] I also take the tie-in websites to contain canon information (Whoisdoctorwho.co.uk implies where and when the Ninth Doctor traveled before he met Rose), even if they might also contain behind-the-scenes data.

Czech's response suggests that in order to mediate this issue admins would have to buy every work. But this just isn't true. As will be discussed below we've had similar situations concerning Rule 1 as is, and moderators have not been forced to buy the books in question. As for the idea that many of the non narrative pieces of fiction are crap, this isn't for us to adjudicate. It's neither here nor there. And, indeed, T:VS notes as much.

The reality is that Rule 1 isn't as practical when it comes to the demarcation between narrative works and non-narrative works as Czech has contended in the past. TARDIS Type 40 Instruction Manual is the example that started this entire discussion 2-3 years ago. The Monster Vault is an example that proves Czech's fears were unfounded, where on the talk page we discussed precisely this issue, and it demonstrates that Rule 1 as it stands is leading to precisely the confusion that Czech's response to Vultraz contends won't happen. Indeed, the line between narrative and non narrative fiction is blurry, and some brave souls have argued that the wiki has been covering works on the wrong side of it as valid for quite some time.

"Story" on this wiki, for the purposes of Rule 1, simply means that things must happen, there must be a series of events with a ing. However, it should be clear that there are obvious fringe cases where we have a series of statements that might or might not fit into a preordering. Not just from the perspective of the difficulties in establishing such a po, but if you're mixing multiple types of facts, some events and some simple statements of fact about the world, only some of these fit into this structure, and you have to make a choice at what point the structure stops being an actual story and simply becomes a recitation of facts.

Moving forward
One obvious solution is to simply remove Rule 1 as it exists altogether, or replacing it with the rule: And attempting to re-consider other parts of T:VS in light of this new rule, given the constant references to narratives in other sections. (Option 1) This is a possible solution, and even one I'm somewhat amenable to. But it has some rather significant logistical difficulties. Unlike non narrative fiction, video games were extensively litigated in the now deleted forums, and while much of that discussion was predicated on accepting Rule 1, that doesn't mean that the points made therein, albeit, ones we cannot see, are invalid. This would be a rather large discussion, and I don't believe it would find consensus within a three week period. Nevertheless, I expect some people to take this line of tack.
 * 1) Only works of fiction count.

Another option is to replace Rule 1 as above and simply leave video games and other forms of interactive storytelling in the "specifically disallowed" section. (Option 2) I think the historical case I've laid out is sufficient to prompt reconsideration on these sorts of stories at some point in the future, but it would be a nuanced discussion that would take quite some time on its own merits, even without discussing non-narrative fiction. And the two discussions together would make it more difficult for an admin to read the threads and synthesize a closing post. (I note that this is the option I support, at least in the interim.)

The third option is attempting to formalize Czech's above idea of "internal inconsistency" into policy. It would be something like But the wording isn't something I'm fixed on, and don't think much of the idea, to be blunt. Unreliable narrators are a well known staple of writing, I think this specific form of policy is too broad.
 * 1) Only works of internally consistent fiction count. (Option 3)

With that said, a fourth idea is suggested by User:Scrooge MacDuck's update to T:VS which slightly generalizes "internal inconsistency", if there's an in-universe explanation for internal inconsistencies within a work we're perfectly content. Perhaps a wording like I'm not married to this wording, and I think this approach also gets too far into the weeds of discussing other issues aside from this proposal though, but I figured it was worth bringing up. Najawin ☎  16:02, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) Only works of internally consistent fiction count, or works that give in-universe explanations for their own contradictions. (Option 4)

Discussion
Holy hell that is one mother-trucker of an OP. 😂 I think I’ll counter that by simply saying: I agree. Danniesen ☎  22:05, 3 February 2023 (UTC)


 * A great opening post, @Najawin. As it happens, I had also been drafting up an opening post for this thread, so I'll leave it below as it covers a lot of things I believe are important. 22:06, 3 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I support the proposal to change Rule 1 to say that "only fiction counts." Yes, this includes RPGs and video games. Quite frankly, the way this wiki views video games is incredibly misguided and deliberately ignores the concept of gameplay and story segregation, something that's a universally accepted concept in pretty much every fandom. Pluto2 ☎ 22:24, 3 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Hmm. Maybe this was too intimidating of an opening. I will again reiterate that I think discussion of video games is best left for another time, it was extensively litigated in past threads, and creating an entirely new video game policy is unlikely to find consensus within a three week period. (I agree with the overall point Pluto is making, but I think it's a bad time to discuss it, basically.) Najawin ☎  12:29, 4 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Najawin and Epsilon first I have to congratulate both of you on an epic level of research and following the different threads, talk pages and discussions to pull this together.
 * I suspect some of the discussions missing are on mine and CzechOut's archived talk pages, unless those discussions are on the long gone forums.
 * To start with what I don't agree with; we can't use "it's not internally consistent" as a reason to disallow something. That would open the doors to far too many questions and other queries as why other narrative works are "in" but others are "out".
 * And similarly we can't just include stuff that's convenient. Any rule has to be able to be applied evenly, and logically.
 * I am kind of going to go back to the original ideas about the wiki in an attempt to say where I am on this. Amazingly the Tardis:About page has mostly been unedited for a long time:
 * "Most of our topics are written as they might appear if discovered in an encyclopedia within the DWU. In other words, we try to treat the subjects of our articles as if they were "real"."

- Tardis:About


 * And the reason all our in-universe articles are written in the past tense is because the "Tardis Data Core" is written as though it's at the end of the universe as the final database of information.
 * Therefore, all fiction that makes up the universe, and everything that exists within those fictions is something should use to pull information from. Those fictions build the universe we are writing the database about.
 * So for example the UNIT Publications would be valid, they are something within the Doctor Who universe, about the universe.
 * Any inconsistencies, we can deal with we have dealt with plenty with the "one account states…etc". —Tangerineduel / talk 14:51, 4 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I am against this proposal. When I first started getting involved in this fandom a decade ago, Rule 1 was singularly the most attractive thing to me about this wiki. I am also a Star Wars fan, and I loved how this wiki didn't bog itself down in information from things like technical manuals like Wookieepedia did. It took half a century of stories and found a way to present the information from them in a way that wasn't hopelessly intimidating to a new fan; everything was clearly sourced as coming from a story, not information from the back of a collectable card. Epsilon suggests that causal users don't care about the distinctions debated in this thread, and I agree that's true, but I very much believe they would care about its effects. We would be opening up the floodgates to a great deal of new information to cover, much of it contradictory, that would all need to be presented with equal weight. This fandom is confusing enough with the contradictions we already have on the wiki, and I believe it would be hostile to casual viewers to add more. Yes, Tangerineduel pointed out that we have a system in place for handling them, but I believe that, the more often we have to resort to "one account states," the less accessible we are to casual fans.


 * You compare us to "virtually every other wiki, such as Wookieepedia," but virtually no other wikis cover a fandom as large as this one. Wookieepedia certainly is comparable, but Star Wars has an entire story group dedicated to maintaining a consistent canon and minimizing contradictions, and, before that existed, they had canon tiers designed to resolve most of the contradictions by making some stories take priority over others. They also generally have all their IP under one roof.


 * Star Trek is one of the only other fandoms that is around the same size as this one, and their approach has been even more severe: their main wiki, Memory Alpha, only covers the TV show and movies. Everything else is shunted off to a secondary wiki, Memory Beta, as only the TV shows and movies are considered canon.


 * The DWU is unique due to many aspects. I can't think of a fandom that is anywhere near as large, explicitly has no "canon," and has such decentralized rights ownership that we cover works wholly disconnected from the franchise's owners. I do not want to change any of that. But simply the goal of covering all the stories and concepts contained therein in the DWU has given us a mammoth of a wiki to manage, and we shouldn't feel obligated to cover things other wikis do in fandoms that are, quite frankly, simpler. If we allow anything in-universe to be valid, Bill Baggs could post a profile about P.R.O.B.E. on BBV's website stating that they destroy the universe in 2025, and we would then be obliged to include it. Admittedly, he could do that now if he put it in an actual story, but that at least puts some bar to entry for what we would consider as valid. I also feel like we would interpret it differently if it was in a story; stories tend to be more up for interpretation with their facts. The information presented in a story is often unreliable, but something presented as objective fact outside of a story does not grant us the same nuance of interpretation, and the lack of that nuance is another potential complication of allowing non-narratives.


 * Also, I have no data to back this up, but I feel that fans generally hold creators to account more for stories than just for random facts presented as "canon." If the above post was made on the BBV website, I doubt any of their limited number of fans would take it seriously, but, if they destroyed the universe in a story (in a non-parodic manner), their fans may reassess future involvement in a spinoff that has diverged so sharply from its source material. In short, I feel that creators are disincentivized from being too ridiculous in actual stories.


 * I do agree that the line between narrative and non-narrative fiction gets very fuzzy. I would be very happy to have a thread for coming up with some firmer guidelines for adjudicating the divide between them, but I know there will always be edge cases no matter what we do. That being said, I still see having those debates frequently as being preferable to giving up on the distinction entirely.


 * When it comes down to it, the stories are what fans are in this fandom for; I can't imagine many people get into Doctor Who because they like reference books. Our goal as a wiki should be to enhance fans' enjoyment of those stories by providing context and reminders/catch-ups (depending on if you're familiar with older works) of other stories. We even have the Behind the Scenes section on pages to include anything particularly notable that isn't from any stories. With that in mind, I don't see that adding in non-narrative fiction will actually add any significant enhancements for the average reader of this wiki. I can't think of many sizable gaps in the narratives that can only be understood by being aware of information from non-narrative sources. These sorts of sources are, in my opinion, usually just pointless continuity. I see it as clutter that will make our pages less accessible to the average fan.Schreibenheimer ☎  17:42, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing me in the direction of the talk pages Tangerine! I think I've found everything in the relevant time periods. In March of 2011 Czech asked you to look over a proposed rewrite to the canon policy. (This happened at the same time as you making the forum post where you asked about the three items which the canon policy was unclear on, almost to the day.) You responded with some comments, asking for effectively the same clarification on non narrative works, since some of them seemed to be used. His clarification of this point was in the thread linked above, and you seemed to come around to it.

However, this made it clear that you weren't just asking a question out of the blue, since you both asked the question and, Czech decided to rewrite the Canon policy at the same time, so something had happened then. I went back and filtered your activity for the past few days and found Forum:Could we create article for each Cybermen Mark/Model?, in which User:Victory93 brings up an issue from The Doctor Who Technical Manual. People can glance at the thread if they wish, but, uh, suffice it to say that there wasn't much discussion, and it amounted to dismissal and calling the source silly.

There are some more interesting tidbits in these archives, as Victory93 decides to fight the good fight before giving up hope in the postscript at the adventure games thread. User talk:CzechOut/Archive 6 and User talk:CzechOut/Archive 6 have him trying to argue that reference sources should be allowed under certain circumstances (if they're written from an in-universe perspective, quality shouldn't count, etc), and he appeals to Tangerine to adjudicate. But Czech is having none of it. The arguments are similar as above, quality control mainly, difficulty of implementation, conflating in-universe reference works with out-of-universe reference works, but, interestingly, also suggesting that misspellings are an important strike against the idea. Tangerine explains the policy of narrative primacy, but it's just a clarification. Looking at a comment in Czech's archive's I'll mention later, I stumbled upon Forum:The Unspecified Cyberman Debate. Not much is relevant here except at the very beginning of the thread, which is mainly a rehash of Czech's insistence that the canon policy disallows non-narrative works. Which? Because "a reference work is a reference work is a reference work", so we can't distinguish between them and "If you look at DWU reference works, as a general group, they're not the most accurate things in the world", for which the examples he gives are reference works about the real world production circumstances.

I found this thread from OS25 asking Czech about a specific reference work that had in-universe sections. (These in-universe sections were later validated as The ArcHive Tapes.) Czech dismisses the idea out of hand, citing administrative concerns, you can't have some reference works be valid and not others, let alone parts of reference works and not other parts. (Interestingly, OS25's post in the original inclusion debates thread takes place right after this, so it was clearly in response to this.) While this is interesting context surrounding this, from my perspective there's no real discussion enshrining the decision, as before. Maybe I'm still missing something, but there doesn't seem to be a there there. Najawin ☎  18:02, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

I Support changing Rule 1 to "Only Fiction counts" it seems unreasonable to me that pieces of fiction intended to expand the DWU or be set in that universe should be invalidated on the basis of format, essentially.Time God Eon ☎  18:46, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

I support validating Type A "non-narrative" fiction, but am dubious about some portions of Type B. To be clear, I do not feel pieces of prose that are essentially printed wiki articles (albeit not of this wiki, but of a hypothetical one) shouldn't be valid. But, again, I am all for Type As Cousin Ettolrhc ☎  22:37, 4 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I might support revision rule 1 to be more consistent or practical. I don't particularly care if we include reference books or the like, and I do understand the original logic that including stuff from reference books isn't helpful since we are a reference book.


 * However, I also am not totally in-favor of the recommended alternatives. My logic is simply: Doctor Who Discovers.


 * This is a book series that I once fought to get counted as valid, but I was told it didn't meet the criteria of being a story because it was a non-fiction educational series. The books feature the Doctor essentially writing out diaries as he visits periods in the past, future, etc. He'll go on tangents about times he fought the Master, and all kinds of similar things.


 * If you look at the revision history of the novels, you can see that the books were once marked as non-fiction, not even qualifying for the "invalid" template. Today, all these novels are apparently valid stories. I have no idea when this happened or why, as I don't think we had a debate about this.


 * My big point is that I am a little hesitant to add "Stories must be fiction" when we've had such inconsistent definitions of what "non-fiction" actually is.


 * Moving back to the side of revising rule 1, one thing I've OFTEN struggled with on this site is the definition of what is and isn't a narrative. I've seen admins argue that one-panel comics are not narratives. In the world of comic analysis, this is an opinion which I literally have never seen. Also, the concept that video games are not narratives is equally unprecedented. Narratives with more than one ending and narratives which are short are still narratives, and so even if we don't kill off rule 1, I would like a better wording that actually explains what it means. OS25🤙☎️ 21:33, 5 February 2023 (UTC)