User:SOTO/Forum Archive/Inclusion debates/@comment-1506468-20190827123101/@comment-24894325-20190828223208

Apologies to those who wanted to know what I meant in the preceding posts. Revanvolatrelundar put his foot down that there is nothing more to discuss. I'm glad, however, that he lets other admin deal with the closure. And I sincerely thank Shambala108 for reminding that there might exist opinions not yet expressed in this thread in all two days of its existence.

I am also very happy that more non-author fans gathered to participate in this discussion and express their opinion.

I, however, strongly disagree that everything has been discussed.

I am glad that finally my objections have been understood. My main concern was always about Rule 3 of T:VS. For instance, if these three stories were published by Obverse instead, there would have been no need for this inclusion debate. Then the situation would have indeed been clear.

The reason this debate was necessary before the pages were created was that it was a heretofore unknown to the wiki publisher, releasing their first DWU stories for free online, on his personal website.

Many people seem to agree upthread that these stories have been officially released. However, I am not sure whether everybody is talking about the same release. Take, for instance, the first of three stories. From publicly available sources I can find at least three different release dates:
 * 8 December 2017 (free release online)
 * August 2018 (during this month Wylder started sending printed pamphlets (a more common British term for chapbooks ) with the story to his backers on Patreon)
 * Estimated March 2020 (printed book with these stories)

Since this inclusion thread is likely to create a precedent that will be used for years to come, it is necessary to be precise. The release date on the page Rachel Survived (short story) corresponds to the first of these three dates.

If someone upthread in fact meant a different release, please restate your position.

As already stated above, this online release came in a form of a webpage and a pdf. However, neither mentions anywhere that this is a publication of Arcbeatle Press. The pdf contains the website address (jameswylder.com), states the copyright as James Wylder, and states that 10,000 Dawns is available from Arcbeatle Press.

So I would like to ask, in which sense is this story released by Arcbeatle Press on 8 December 2017 if Arcbeatle Press is not mentioned as the publisher anywhere?

To be clear, even to this date, the story cannot be found on the website of Arcbeatle Press.

The blog post that is allegedly the release of the story does not mention Arcbeatle Press either. Instead here are excerpts from the description of this release:
 * "I love it, and I wanted to do something to share that love with my readers"
 * "I’ve gotten permission from a Faction Paradox author to write a story"
 * "So thank you to Andrew Hickey for trusting me with his creation"
 * "Thank you as well to all my backers on Patreon who make this weird stuff possible."

This should make it clear why this was deemed to be fan fiction. The author is mentioned multiple times but no statement is made about any kind of publisher. And the express purpose of posting this story is to share it with other fans (which was also expressed by Wylder upthread), a hallmark of fan fiction.

Since James Wylder considers a suggestion that he, among other things, writes fan fiction a personal insult, let me clarify that I do not consider it and do not mean it as insulting. Fan fiction can be legal (when permissions are obtained explicitly or implicitly). One of my favourite Doctor Who writers/producers, Nick Briggs, began with producing fan fiction at Audio Visuals. I hope this satisfies Tardis:No personal attacks.

To make things even clearer, a publisher is firmly separated from the story by being mentioned as a publisher of 10,000 Dawns within the pdf of the story itself, not as a publisher of the story.