Forum:Coverage/validity: DWA meta-fiction

Introduction
Doctor Who Adventures was a nifty little all-ages magazine. Apart from their various comic strips - both valid and invalid - it also had an abundance of fun and wacky features, many of which bordered on being in-universe, or at the very least presented themselves as such.

I've been gradually going back and grabbing old issues online and oh boy what a nostalgic treasure trove!

For a couple of periods, each issue opened with a letter written by the Doctor themselves; the letters written by the Twelfth Doctor for all 24 issues of the magazine's 2015 reboot are the most in-depth of these, easily placing within the same level of vality as the A Letter from the Doctor series in my mind; they fully contextualise themselves as letters written for the magazine, often touching upon each issues contents. The ones written by the Eleventh Doctor, which appeared in issues published from 2011 to 2013, are a bit briefer and only occasionally contextualise themselves. You can find information on some of these letters via the pages I made for them: Hello, Time Travellers! and Dear Readers. There maybe other incarnations of this "letter" series I haven't discovered yet - ones written by the Tenth Doctor, perhaps? - I'll wait and see.

Another reoccurring feature that presents itself with a metafictional slant - one which makes it a more problematic thing to cover - is the letters pages. For a long stretch of the Eleventh Doctor's era (at least), the magazine ran a letters page in which readers sent in questions to be answered by the Doctor himself, as well as by Madam Kovarian in her own little column for a while. The only reason I find this one more difficult to approach as "in-universe" is, of course, because of all of the real world names on display. If these were covered as in-universe documents, it would mean making pages for all of these random real world children, and that just feels… creepy, for lack of a better term.

Finally, there are countless one-off features that have elements of meta-fiction. One that I've already made a page for - currently presented as valid, though I'm open to that changing - is We Are 200!

I'll be coming back with more examples in the future, but for now, discuss what I've brought up so far. WaltK ☎  22:38, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Discussion
I'm unsure - if something like this came out today, it may be best to leave it alone, but to me the question is whether everyone from it would be an adult now - if they're over the age of 18, that's a lot less problematic in my mind than documenting them while they're a minor. Not entirely sure, though. Cookieboy 2005 ☎  09:40, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Let's start with one of those one-off's: issue 249's The Doctor's Guide to 2012. It's the Eleventh Doctor doing a month-by-month summery of the then-new year. Like the majority of these features, it's a harmless piece daftness. It would indeed be fun to say it's valid that February smells like blackcurrant, or that Lady Gaga accidentally starts a new fashion trend involving tunafish. WaltK ☎  01:13, 6 August 2023 (UTC)


 * I mean, that one seems fine to me, the only issues I potentially see with other ones are privacy issues with real children's names. Cookieboy 2005 ☎  10:07, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
 * As I go through it, I do start to question whether it should be valid. Reading about a meteor in the exact shape of Dermot O'Leary's face tends to do that to a person. WaltK ☎  21:46, 6 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Without understanding much of this situation, I think they should be covered but invalid. Cousin Ettolrahc ☎  12:24, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
 * we cover the crossovers with Contact 21 (in-universe) and Spectrum Shadesas well as several of the children who wrote in contacting Brent Cleever so we have a precedent for this. Their for I think it should be validated. If we do not validate it then we are ignoring something which is very important to our coverage of the 2060s Dalek invasion of Earth as we find out that the Daleks lost the Invasion (we are not shown this but find out in a latter source how, but from a historic perspective the Spectrum Shades story Daleks on the Move? (short story)is the only conclusion from TVC21 on said invasio.Anastasia Cousins ☎  16:04, 9 August 2023 (UTC)


 * I can only judge the Hello, Time Travellers! and Doctor, Doctor! parts of the magazine, given that I primarily own Matt Smith era issues, and apart from the potential issues with the identities of minors (although they are presumably adults now)... I have some concerns with the content.


 * Regarding Doctor, Doctor! and the identities of minors, I am hesitant in covering them even if they are technically adults now; for one, it is quite different to have your name printed in a single issue of an obscure kiddie magazine from a decade ago which few copies likely still remain today than to have a Fandom Wiki page based on that, which will, given Fandom's high SEO priority, be ranked high in search results. Imagine someone Googles your name and the first thing that appears is an in-universe Tardis Wiki page! I can't imagine many people would like that. Plus, there is also the issues that come with anyone who may be transgender or similar, as we could inadvertently document their deadnames. Of course, if any of the original readers come forth and are comfortable with themselves being documented in such a way (like myself) then I see little issue with covering them.
 * A solution to this may be to just name each person, generally speaking, something like Reader 1 (Doctor, Doctor! 292) and just... avoid naming them altogether. Even if these letters pages are made invalid, we still have to cover them, so I feel this is a priority over their validity.


 * I currently own DWA 217, DWA 289, DWA 292, and DWA 299, and looking at the Doctor, Doctor! letters... while they certainly are goofy, they are no more goofy like the How to be a Time Lord book which is very tonally similar to these letters pages, and nothing in them seem to break T:VS, apart from being occasionally meta-fiction leaning and parodical (in the broader sense of the term where something is very silly and unadulterated rather than traditional lampooning).


 * Regarding Hello, Time Travellers!, these are certainly more metafictional, which coupled with their sillier tone than the A Letter from the Doctor precursors, does make me more sceptical of their validity. In DWA 292's Hello, Time Travellers!, the Doctor claims that at the last Halloween party he went to, the Daleks dressed up as the thing they were most scared of — so a no-prize if you guessed they put on bow-ties to imitate the Doctor. Of course, the Doctor could be lying, but it does make me feel it needs a bit of scrutinising here.
 * That being said, they too should probably be valid (although I don't think this thread intended to invalidate them, but I wanted to express my thoughts on them). As @WaltK said, reading this sort of stuff does tend to make you question the validity of these things. 16:54, 9 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Epsilon's points about the safeguarding of readers' privacy (which are all absolutely solid) has been making me wonder if it was really a good idea to identify the competition winners who created Heather and Decky on their respective pages. And other "civilians" for that matter. WaltK ☎  19:52, 9 August 2023 (UTC)


 * I agree there. I feel we could continue to identify William Grantham given he has a public YouTube channel where he openly speaks about the Abzorbaloff, but he is more of an exception. 20:07, 9 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Also, regarding my suggestion of Reader 1 (Doctor, Doctor! 292), we could do readers of Doctor Who Adventures like readers of whoisdoctorwho.co.uk. And this Forum does open questions about those real people too (although, thankfully, many of the people who submitted flash fiction did either use aliases or not their full names, though there have been some instances where I've avoided using what appears to be their email address which certainly is a no-go to cover here). 20:12, 9 August 2023 (UTC)


 * so what do we do with the TVC21 write ins? We cover each write in that crosses over with the DWU as valid including the children who wrote in. Are you suggesting we change them as well? The fact is that would, I feel, weaken those articles as those write ins can be as I have said before massively important for the history of the 2060’s especially the 2060s Dalek invasion of Earth which is functionally wrapped up in one of these short stories. Perhaps say a 40 year count so that after 40 years we pop their names up? This way we keep the old 60’s write ins as they are both important for narrative and fandom history reasons, and keep privet the more recent write ins. Of course another problem here is that some people may have transitioned since and changed their names. If they get in contact with us should we change the names on the page to their preferred names? Overall should we go for an opt in system or an opt out system? Emails of real people are definitely a no go.Anastasia Cousins ☎  20:19, 9 August 2023 (UTC)


 * I think I agree. While it may seem to be a double standard... I don't think we need to have this level of caution with kids who wrote in nearly sixty years ago. I feel the chances of the issues arising with more recent write-ins are much less likely than anything more recent.
 * I think evaluating whether to cover real people should absolutely be a case-by-case with each story/series. Something from the 1960s? We should cover. The tie-in websites? Cover. Kid magazines from the past twenty-thirty years? Nah. I think that not only are we dealing with real people here, the Doctor, Doctor! readers often use their full names and were children at the time. Of course, in any case where someone is covered and asks to be removed, we should remove their names.
 * Re. deadnames, I don't think it is codified in policy (though it should be) but changing the page to use their current names is the only option we should pursue. Haven't we already established this with Jayce Black (in-universe)? 20:32, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I guess I missed that page but we still need a formal policy (this I don’t think is the write place for that and will require a new forum). But I think a cut off point is important. Pseudonyms is say are fine to cover but really names should not be after a set time. I believe the cut of point should be officially decided on and not vague at all. I propose, as said previously, a 40 year cut off. As this allows significant time between point a and b ti allow them to be seen probably as different people with the same name? Anastasia Cousins ☎  20:44, 9 August 2023 (UTC)


 * To me, forty years is a little arbitrary. It could be thirty-five years or forty-five or even fifty. I'm not sure there is a precise way to determine this cutoff point. (I don't reckon this Wiki — or really any other — will be around in forty years, and I'll be surprised if it is.) 20:47, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm sure I saw a deadname policy somewhere... Goodness knows where. Aquanafrahudy 📢  21:01, 9 August 2023 (UTC)


 * I absolutely think we should cover the letters as valid on the wiki. They were absolutely written as in-universe segments, so should be presented as such. We don’t have to put names to the kids who wrote questions. We could just do "DWA reader", and makes a page like the one Epsilon suggested above "Readers of Doctor Who Adventures". Danniesen ☎  21:04, 9 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Tardis:Names of actors is the closest thing we have to a deadname policy. It is not quite as robust as it should be. Najawin ☎  21:38, 9 August 2023 (UTC)


 * From what information is available I would lean on the side of validity for most of the stuff in the OP. The parallel of the Doctor-penned letters to (the valid) A Letter from the Doctor series from DWM certainly seems strong but I'd be hesitant to rule on an all-in or all-out basis for the general concept of "DWA meta-fiction" especially when so much of it don't even have pages yet.


 * Then there's the privacy concern, which I agree is an issue for these more recent works. Even if a cut-off period for readers' names is a little arbitrary, I think it's a good idea to pin down a specific date. The letters section of Doctor Who Magazine has been ongoing since '79 and featured replies from the Doctor in several of its eras so we should make abundantly clear how recent is too recent for coverage. Borisashton ☎  21:45, 9 August 2023 (UTC)