User:Epsilon the Eternal/Opening posts/Non-narrative fiction

For around the past decade-and-a-half, this Wiki has drawn a Line in the Sand about what fiction can be a valid source for writing in-universe articles, by essentially judging a given source — aka a piece of fiction — based on a set of essentially four pieces of critera. But for a small amount arbitrary of arbitrary reasons, non-narrative fiction has been on the Other Side of the Line in the Sand, as it is treated as an "invalid source".

To quote Douglas Adams, "This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."

In this Forum thread, I have several aims:
 * 1) To document the history of the coverage of non-narrative fiction on this Wiki, to provide context towards the invalidity of an entire genre,
 * 2) To address the two "core" types of non-narrative fiction,
 * 3) To address coverage of non-diegetic references to the real world that can be present in some non-narrative fiction,
 * 4) Removing the distinction in our validity system between narrative and non-narrative ficton,
 * 5) And finally, what we need to do to validate this content.

History
to be added

The Two Types of Non-Narrative Fiction
In my time Wikifying non-narrative fiction, I have found that it can be sorted into one of two types. Type A, as I will dub it, is non-narrative information told from an "in-universe" perspective, and Type B, non-narrative information told from an "out-of-universe" perspective.

Type A
Type A is your non-narrative fiction that is presented as in-universe documents, blueprints, schematics, posters, and what have you. These are pieces of fiction that are styled to look, well, like something that has been plucked out of the Doctor's universe and into our own; they use unfiction, a type of fiction that attempts to convince its readers it is actually real.

This type of non-narrative fiction, I feel, is what we associate when "non-narrative fiction" is mentioned, and is what we want as a Bare Minimum to be a valid source at the end of this Thread.

Examples of this can include:
 * Anti-Dalek Weapons
 * Inside a Dalek
 * UNIT Publications

Type B
Type B... is a little more complicated. This is where a given source will be written essentially as a real world article, where its author contributes new fictional information from a real world perspective. This usually involves an author's pre-existing research, complete with citations and/or non-diegetic references to the real world.

So an article may give an overview of, let's say, the culture born on Skaro from the Kaleds. This would involve either citations, or a sentence/paragraph beginning with "As first seen in The Magician's Apprentice..." or something of that ilk. Non-narrative fiction like this, I ideally want to be a valid source, as citations/non-diegetic references aren't meant to be taken as part of the overall "fiction" being told by the source, it is meant to be an indicator to a reader for context.

Now, it should be clarified that we do have precedent of recognising non-diegetic references as such in valid sources. In many comic stories, there can be little "Editor's Note" boxes that may tell a reader that the Wrarth Warriors first appeared in DWM 19-26, and there are examples of this in valid short stories such as The Fantastic, Fabulous Gallery of Characters That Nearly Made It Into Closing Time but Didn't for Some Reason, which does make non-diegetic references to Closing Time.

Now, I feel that these citations/non-diegetic references, as I've explained, should not be taken as cause for invalidity, but I can respect dissenting opinions on this matter. I feel, ultimately, some of these Type B sources can have biases, where the author talks about their thoughts or opinions on what they're documenting. If a Type B source has these, then it should remain invalid. But if it unbiased and purely factual, and just so happens to say that the Saxon Master first appeared in Utopia, then the source should be valid.

Examples of this include:
 * The Gallifrey Chronicles
 * The 14* Doctors

What We Need to do to Validate This Content
Such as category reform, standardise "(feature)".