Tardis talk:Tardis Manual

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)

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)