User:Najawin/Sandbox 7

Trying to do a bit of a historical dive into forums/talk pages and flesh out what is important and for why. Might be subjective, but hopefully I can figure out what might give some insight into what other people care about. GAAAAHHH people didn't archive talk pages in the early days. They just deleted them. Makes things hard to find.

https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Reference_desk_archives

https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Tech_notes_archives?t=20201127150922 <!--

Threads, 2006 and prior
A lot of these are completely inapplicable to the modern wiki, as Czech's archive notes say when you look at the threads. A few things that are still somewhat relevant are:

Forum:Wikipedia Infobox link - Which seems to be the basis for the idea that we should avoid placing links in infoboxes and instead place them at the bottom of the page. (Even if we tend not to place links to wiki for episodes these days.)

Forum:Let's Get Organised - is a really interesting thread, being one of the first. Establishes T:NPOV, explicitly rejects the idea of canon, and discusses things like Tardis:To do list. Not everything in here has had lasting support, as Czech notes in his archivist comment, but I think even the proposals that "failed" are ones we should revisit from time to time. Certainly notable, even if we ignore that it started the forum system.

Forum:Origins of the format for television story entries - As discussed by Czech in his archivist note, this is an important historical thread for looking at how our story pages developed. It's useful to look at if you want to know why things grew to be the way they are, or perhaps argue that we should make changes. But things have changed since then.

Forum:Protect story pages? - Didn't really get a ton of discussion, but there seems to be a decision not to protect pages, even semi-important ones, unless active vandalism occurs.

Forum:Influences Section on Story Pages - RIP, removal of literary analysis of stories unless specifically stated by people in production.

Forum:Archives of the original Panopticon - We see some of the basics of the POV, Manual of Style, canon policy, as well as naming policy.

Forum:The original Panopticon - Discussion of formats for both book articles, as well as character articles, the start of our categorization system, and naming policy.

Forum:The original inclusion debates - What a mess. So the original idea seems to be to segregate sources that are likely to contradict others away from the rest, with differing opinions as to how viable this is. Ultimately the segregation option doesn't seem to have gone through, based on the above decision to implement T:NPOV. But for all the bringing up of specific items, there's not a lot of discussion or clear decisions about them. It does seem to be the source of our merchandise rules though.
 * There is no context for the merchandise to have canon, they are an object rather than a 'work'. Everything that is considered canon has content that can give the text context within the wider DW Universe. You can read a novel, watch a TV show, listen to an audio drama. A piece of merchandise, or specifically a figure is an object from a text, its meaning is given definition from its source text

Other issues involve treating target novelizations as "secondary canon" and discussion of using novelizations for page names. It also contains the very fun quote:
 * I suppose, therfore, what I'm advocating is that television be allowed to dominate when there's a clash between an episode and an adventure in another medium. That seems to be what the BBC is actually saying their policy is, if not entirely publicly. I am quite certain that in the eyes of the copyright holder, the television episodes are top-tier continuity, while all the other stuff is roughly equal. It follows then that central facts about a televised subject — their name, their marital status, the time from whence they come, details about their regeneration or death — cannot solely come from another medium.

Talk pages, <2006
Talk:Rose (TV story)/Archive 1 is where another place where the beginnings of our TV story page style is developed. Ideas that were discussed at the time but didn't pan out are subpages for detailed plot sections (!!) and a quotes section. It also seems to be where our policy on wikification comes from.

Talk:The Doctor/Archive 1 not sure if this is the first place detailing it, but it's explicitly stated here that the earlier attempt to segregate stories by levels of canonicity (in italics) had failed and was being ignored. Forum:Let's Get Organised also touches on this, but it's not exactly an explicit agreement from users.

Talk:Novelizations - interesting page, seems to establish an early on disdain for novelizations, treating them as secondary sources.

Tardis talk:Tardis Manual/Archive 1 - some precedent for our later MoS, but we've moved past a lot of it. Our specific tensing/IU format seems to come from here.

Tardis talk:Community Portal - Why is this page still a thing? It's a weird artifact of the wiki's early days that was just never deleted.

Talk:Castrovalva (TV story) - Establishes our DAB policy.

Not a talk page, but the old block policy is interesting.

Do we currently use Tardis:GNU Free Documentation License?

Threads, 2007
Forum:The Doctor's Species - interesting to see how we've moved on in how we treat reconciling conflicting information from sources, as well as the evolution of disputed information in infoboxes. Not necessarily directly applicable to anything today though, it's been superseded by other approaches.

Forum:Wikifying to Wikipedia - Question has just never been answered in 16 years. Interesting one though. Maybe we should revisit it at some point, for verbs that are uncommon or something.

Forum:The Special:Import feature - Interesting Archivist note by Czech that has never been brought up in admin noms since. Might want to do that in the future.

Forum:How do I move pages and categories? - Could be vaguely seen as the start of how we decide on pages being the primary topic and thus undabbed? Czech's Archivist note points out that this is really tenuous.

Forum:Some questions on referencing - Interesting discussion of how to deal with interweaving fiction and non-fiction. At least back in 2007 it was a grey area, the distaste that came for it happened a little later.

Forum:Changing novelisation prefix and a question as to novelisation canonicity - Weird one. Some users are really hesitant to consider novelizations "canon", but are aware that the franchise is already wildly contradictory as is without them and suggests that it might just be a waste of time discussing it. Does use the phrase "One account has it that"

Forum:Pointless/redundant wikiing - Mainly useful for the Archivist note. Shows some of the origins of "no article too small".

Forum:Addition of 'Pricing' to the Magazine Infobox - Just a small bit of early discussion that leans against merchandising concerns. Interesting.

Forum:Should The Trial of a Time Lord be one page - Never really went anywhere, but slightly more relevant with the advent of Flux.

Forum:References on bottom - Interesting discussion of changing to Wookiepedia style references. Never went anywhere. (See also Forum:Can we change how stories are cited?)

Forum:Quotes - Substantial reform of where quotes belong on this wiki.

Forum:Origin of administrator nomination process - Clean and simple. But shows how little thought went into the process, and how it's 16 years old.

Talk pages, 2007
Talk:Universe - Interesting discussion of The Cosmology of the Spiral Politic (feature) and how at this time IU essays were still grey area.

Talk:Eighth Doctor/Archive 1 - Some pushback on the idea of IU perspective on all articles. Specifically:
 * To say, simply, that the events of The Eight Doctors are what happened directly after the television movie is entirely biased towards that particular medium. There's no reason in the world why Storm Warning, End Game, or Dreadnought can't equally be viewed as the immediate post-TVM story.

Talk:DWIN - !!!! One of the early discussions concerning covering fan content on this wiki, no matter how notable. Interesting reasoning.

Talk:K9 Mark IV - interesting discussion of how merchandising might be used to supplement narrative sources for minor things like names. Not major, as every page must be named something, but, y'know.

Talk:Bat - is an interesting place where there's early suggestion that we might actually not have pages for every small thing mentioned in the DWU (as does Forum:Let's Get Organised).

Talk:Jack Harkness/Archive 1 - hardline push against speculation and BTS comments on Face of Boe stuff.

Tangerine's talk page includes some notable early discussion about merchandising!
 * the pricing in context with merchandising overall gives a reflection of the quality and the market at which the product is released. To collectors, researchers and historians this is useful. [...] If the TARDIS wiki is to be all-inclusive to information pertaining to Doctor Who, then merchandising (endorsed by the BBC through various enterprises), could indeed be a draw to the site for a range of `collectors' hungry for specifics

This prompted Forum:Addition of 'Pricing' to the Magazine Infobox, as discussed above. (I greatly appreciate that someone mentioned to Tangerine that Kylie Minogue was going to be returning as the Rani on his talk page and he seemed to get annoyed and delete it.)

Talk:Korst Gogg Thek Lutiven-Day Slitheen - huh, names based on novelization, all those years ago.

Talk:Big Finish Doctor Who audio stories - Hmm, trying to split off things that don't feature The Doctor from things that do feature The Doctor. Seeing a recurring trend in some of these early talk page/threads.

Threads, 2008
Forum:The Master - Recently been overruled, but this is one of the early discussions concerning merging The Master into one page. Not the only, but the first.

Forum:Wanted pages with similar names - An early discussion that enforces T:NO RW as it applies to page names, though not in those terms.

Forum:How many Doctors? - notable disagreement over whether we can use reference/BTS sources on numbering Doctors prior to narrative confirmation in The Lodger.

Forum:Parallel timelines - Discussion of parallel universes/timelines, an area where (imo) the wiki still doesn't have clear policy.

Forum:Serious .... - Explicit statement in 2008 that it was still being considered that insofar as non narrative sources might not be canon it was because of the FASA roleplaying guides contradicting established sources. (Since been overturned in Tardis:Temporary forums/Archive/Non-narrative fiction and Rule 1)

Forum:Nominations for featured articles - related to potential discussions we're having, what sort of articles should be featured/on the front page / who should nominate them?

Forum:RE: A general chat! - "How do 'we' as a community get to know each others strengths and interests? Any ideas?" - Interesting perspective. Seems like we're more connected as a community now, even those of us who are uniquely on wiki. (With that said, the "only talk about Doctor Who and the wiki" rule makes it difficult to have conversations, though that thread was focused on editing as well.)

Forum:Battle of the Ood Sphere - Dramatically relevant to recent events, as of writing this. Not sure if this is overturned, Talk:Howling Halls/Archive 1 doesn't clearly do so. (See the date of the Archivist note as well as the date of the talk page discussion.) As of 2011 it was an unresolved issue if unnamed events that haven't been referenced as distinct things in other stories should have pages. Czech is against this because it's just rehashing the events of an episode.
 * I think a good rule of thumb is that you shouldn't create an article about an event unless that event is referred to by a specific name in another episode. It's all well and good to create a name for an event to keep an article in-universe. But when you actually create an article with an invented name, that's exceeding our mandate here.

However, there is dissent, Lord Xander thinks that all "major events" should be covered. The Archivist Note here points out that in effect the wiki has only decided to wikify battles and not major events, though there was no clear decision in this thread. Which leads to....

Forum:Skirmish at TARDIS Wiki - which seems to line up with Czech's summary of the situation while Archiving threads.

Forum:Need more info on Omega - Discussion on branching path stories being "semi canon" as the specific one is a game book.

Forum:Are deleted scenes canon? - Seems not. Though some think it depends on "why" they're deleted. There's some discussion of what second editions of books with new scenes entail, which is an interesting subject.

Forum:Canonicity of Dalek Annuals - Blame the mole will you? It's the mole's fault.

Forum:Canonicity of I Am the Doctor - uggggghhh, page for the book was deleted by Czech, I'm not confident he's right that consensus was clearly for deletion. Maybe we should bring it back, or at least discuss it. I'm probably pro delete, but also pro discuss.

Forum:Galleries on story pages debated - one of the places where the old policies against galleries was first discussed.

Forum:Story names (modified like this) - Some really strong statements from Czech on the wiki being tailored to the average fan when it comes to dab terms (or lack thereof) for tv episodes. Sounds almost like Nate's recent comments. :P

Forum:Why do prefixes link as they do? - Obviously one of the most foundational threads in the wiki's history even if we've moved past bits of it. Funnily enough I think this is where the insistence that John and Gillian having a single page came from.

Forum:Absent Admins - No decision made to trim admins who don't contribute. (Though I know that later on this decision was, at least in one particular discrete instance, overturned for one mass removal.)

Forum:IRC channel - rip chat.

Forum:2008 main page redesign - some old ideas from an earlier redesign that we might want to dust off at some point.

Forum:Plagiarism case that lead directly to Tardis:Plagiarism - self explanatory.

Forum:Images Policy - recently overruled, but it discusses colorization, #of pictures / text, and galleries.

Forum:Response to user introducing info from charity publications into in-universe articles - Why is this labeled a policy changer? It's just a complaint.

Talk pages, 2008
Talk:Owen Harper/Archive 1 - Fun fun, old discussion where there's a suggestion that for more, uh, gauche body parts and bodily functions, we can just refer to it on the human anatomy page or something.

Talk:Something Borrowed (TV story) - Disgusting support of theological ignorance. Truly disgusting that the wiki would support such a thing.

User talk:Stardizzy2 - Some interesting, if not entirely 100% accurate, I feel, discussion of Time's Champion and I Am the Doctor.

Talk: I Am the Doctor: The Unauthorised Diaries of a Timelord - I honestly don't know enough about this to comment, but as stated above, it's unclear to me that it was clearly in favor of deletion.

Talk: The Doctor and the Enterprise/Archive 1 - This is a fascinating discussion, both in terms of the actual page and what's being discussed, but as a window into early policies. (Charity publications used to be covered! There was a reasonable segment who thought anything notable for Doctor Who as a cultural phenomena, licensed or not, should be on this wiki!)

Talk: Doctor Who fan music - On the other hand, there's some notable dislike towards allowing fan work on the wiki.

Talk: Doctor Who (TV story)/Archive 1 - Discussion of naming of the TV movie page.

Talk:Companion/Archive 1 - Notes about editorializing + can we demarcate companion vs non companion.

Talk:Music of the Spheres (TV story)/Archive 1 - !!!!!!! Discussion of metafiction, fourth wall breaks and Attack of the Graske. Oh my!

Talk:Doctor Who Magazine graphic novels - I'm sure this is interesting in some way. Didn't have clear resolution, was based off of Howe's Transcendental Toybox.

User talk:Ghelæ - No real discussion, but some of Czech's early thoughts on using websites as sources, such as the UNIT site and Martha's myspace.

User talk:23skidoo - And immediately below. Nothing super important, just a look into how the various page layouts evolved and how people viewed the sections we have to this day at the time in question.

Talk:Kelsey Hooper - Old comment about what our policy should be for comments about real world people. No longer followed, though it never really generated discussion, it was just a user's (later an admin) view.

Talk:Journey's End (TV story)/Archive 1 - some discussion of the episode in other countries + languages.

Talk:Interplanetary Mining Corporation - Weird page to have this discussion, but there it is, discussion of T:NPOV.
 * ...This would be all much clearer if the article just shifted the stuff in the books to a section of its own. Not "Behind the Scenes", but "Other accounts" of "In other Media" or somesuch. There's nothing which offends the MOS or the BBC stance on canon to give primacy to televised adventures...
 * I don't see why the spin-off media shouldn't be used in the way it's intended to. It was made to fill out the Doctor Who universe, make connections between references, explain little mentions. Why is this supposed to be a problem?...
 * Again, I'm not saying we should ignore spin-off material. I'm not saying it shouldn't be in the article. I'm just looking for a way to include it in such a way that it's absolutely clear that it comes from a source other than TV. I'm arguing, I suppose, that TV material on a subject should get pride of place...
 * ...We are not going to be separating all the articles into 'TV' and then 'Other media'...

Talk:Doctor Who Club of Australia - Huh. Discussion of fan content on the site, specifically fan websites and fan clubs, and a claim that "it was decided we wouldn't have [every fan site noted] as it'd just be endless". This isn't on any talk page or forum post I found. If it was decided, that talk page was deleted. Maybe it was Talk:DWIN? But that's not exactly what happened there.

Threads, 2009
Forum:The land of Fiction's Dr. Who and the Doctor Who Annuals - Not necessarily a massively important discussion, but just some minutiae related to the how differing portrayals of The Doctor in the very early days of the franchise have affected things.

Forum:"Children of Earth" takes place in late 2009: confirm/deny?, Forum:Timeline Clarification Questions - See Aliens of London dating controversy.

Forum:Canonicity of NA novels - More arguments about canon policy, someone trying to argue the show is invalidating wilderness era stuff. No bites.

Forum:Doctor Who Collectors Wiki - Czech closes this as unresolved, notes that in practice we don't link much to the Collectors wiki. More of the same of merchandise being neglected on the wiki.

Forum:How to handle an inconsistent editor? - Dare I call this precedent for a blocking policy for users with minor issues? I might.

Forum:Infobox suggestions - Oh, wow, massive discussion here. We can't really see some of the test inboxes at the beginning, but clearly anyone who wants to redesign infoboxes needs to read this thread. (Though I believe at this point we've implemented most of these ideas as Czech noted we likely would at the end.) Further discussion relevant to this is located at User talk:CzechOut/Archive 1, Talk: Infobox TV test, here, here, Talk: Infobox TV test and Forum:Proposal - Revert Comic Infobox.  Probably a foundational text for infobox discussions, even if outdated. And I do appreciate that Czech's proposal, and this foundational reference for infobox discussions forever more, contains a juvenile joke and choice of website. As a coda there's also Tardis talk:Infobox development 2009 to 2011/Archive 1.

Forum:Doctor Who Novelisations - canon or not? - Outdated, but relevant. Of particular note because in the Before Times when it wasn't easy to get access to recordings of the classic series they used the novelizations for reference in writing novels, which we considered non-canon.

Forum:Web comics - A discussion that would rear its head more recently in a very divisive manner. Related to Rule 2 concerns for T:VS broadly speaking, what does it mean to have a "commercial license"? You have professional creators who are using licensed concepts who were directly commissioned by the BBC, even if the license under question is a broad one under which they also licensed fan work. It's a dodgy issue. See also here and here for a discussion of how this relates more broadly to fan work.

Forum:BBC Video vs. BBC DVD - I mean, this isn't amazing, but we don't have a ton of policies on corporate structure even though some of our real world pages actively depend on it, so any discussion I can find on it bears mentioning.

Forum:Missing Episodes Indicator - A failed proposal that's quite decent imo.

Forum:Proposal: New section in spin-off media articles, Forum:Origins of The Howling - Origins of Howling:The Howling. Seems to have a larger remit originally than it does now.

Forum:Italics or Quotation marks? - Origin of T:ITAL ish.

Forum:Origins of video policy, Forum:Origins of our video policy - titles are self explanatory. Threads are very... Surface level.

Forum:Where would I put content derived from reference works? - Czech's archive note here is right, this is sort of a really broad question. Maybe related to non narrative fiction? But it also discusses merchandise? Weird stuff.

Forum:Discussion Pages. - Correct! Do not delete stuff on talk pages. Admins - please do not delete talk pages unless there's sensitive information on them. They're often quite interesting.

Forum:Non-canonical appearances in lists of appearances - I guess this was changed for some reason? We had to have a discussion recently to do this again, putting invalid stories in LoAs. But it was already agreed to back here. Weird.

Talk pages, 2009
Talk:The DoctorDonna - Consensus gave us a merger, as would continuity of consciousness, but it was unmerged in 2020. Maybe there was a discussion about it? idk.

Talk:SLEEPY (novel) - 2009. This discussion started in 2009. It ended over a decade later. I hate all of you so much. Conclusion is that neither the Library of Congress nor WorldCat is a reliable source for how titles are stylized.

Talk:Manipulator arm - Some citation of non narrative work here. But very much treated as a lesser source.

Talk:BBC (in-universe) - The discussion here and at the associated thread highlighted some of the problems T:DAB IU solved.

Talk:Antranak (cat) - Maybe slightly relevant to T:DON'T COPY. Not very though.

Talk:TARDIS key - Modulo the fanfic concerns this seems to be a prelude to Talk:Howling Halls/Archive 1.

Image Talk:Gilbert and Sullivan.jpg - Establishes that we absolutely should not use images that are not IU outside of BTS sections. This has since been broadened to be promo images, etc. But not unrelated real world images.

Talk:From Raxacoricofallapatorius with Love (TV story) - Humorous = clearly not canon, apparently.

Talk:Enlightenment (fanzine) - Discussion of fan works on the wiki to some extent.

Frubes page confirmed.

Talk:The Darksmith Legacy - Of minor note because of concerns of hosting potentially copyrighted material as well as considerations as what the wiki hosts that encourages people to buy the product / simply documents things for later vs actually discourages people. Also highlights how our understanding of The Howling as a forum has evolved.

User talk:23skidoo - Some references to T:NPOV and T:EVIL TWIN. At this point NPOV had largely solidified as much as it was going to in the pre-valid sources days, I suspect, so that's not surprising. It also gestures towards the "according to one account" terminology we use today as early as the very end of 2009, though with slightly different wording. However, the story the two are discussing is one of the comic maker comics. Which were later very definitively declared invalid. The comments here make this issue more interesting.

Talk:Planet of the Dead (TV story)/Archive 1 - Some discussion of when rumors are allowed on pages, if they need sources or not. No clear consensus? Very short discussion.

User talk:Doug86/Archive 1, here, and User talk:CatherineMunro - Based on a policy I don't think FANDOM has, it's a policy wikipedia had when we were under Wikia. But discussion of how to handle requests for deleting pages from subjects of articles. Not quite the same thing, but somewhat relevant to more recent debates about categorization, I guess? Kinda?

Talk:The mighty 200 - I guess maybe giving a clear ruling that individual features in DWM don't get pages? Yeah, I'm stretching. Look, not every old talk page can be a winner. But we should still be able to read them!

Talk:Reindeer - Not really following the logic here. If the idents aren't valid wouldn't you still have pages for the invalid/noncanon Reindeer that would be IU? Just invalid rather than RW? Maybe policy was different at the time? I don't think so though. Don't get it at all.

Talk:TDL - Not quite applicable to the modern wiki thanks to modern prefix notions, but it's sort of related to how it's a bit difficult to splice up things like Torchwood (series) or Paradise Towers (series), which led to this prefix sticking around a bit longer than others.

Tardis talk:Prefixes/Archive 1 - Evidence that charity anthologies were once allowed on wiki.

Talk:Tina (Planet of the Dead) - More prelude to Talk:Howling Halls/Archive 1.

Talk:Condensate Wilderness - Non narrative fiction, not immediately disqualified, but is seen as less important than TV. Interestingly, the discussion on this page was never resolved.

Threads, 2010
Forum:Eighth Doctor Books and Audio, which take place first? - Some discussion of the motivations which led to timeline stuff being taken out of the main namespace rather definitively. Note that at the time the timeline pages were not in the "Theory" namespace, the bot replaced this in 2013.

Forum:City of the Daleks - This is the origin of the idea that gameplay is narrative on the wiki, as it predates Forum:We need a policy on videogames.
 * The BBC really should release an official play-through video of someone doing everything exactly as intended. No matter what they say, I don't think it's actually canonical that "the Doctor walked around in circles for a while because Amy wouldn't go around the edge of the wall, then he accidentally walked directly into a view of the Daleks and got exterminated, but the last minute of time was somehow undone, and after four more reptitions of this, he finally made it to the Underground."

Forum:Extended plots - How long should plot sections/summaries be on this wiki? Unresolved, and still debated to this day.

Forum:Disputed Companions - Companion discussions are awful, this is more of the same.

Forum:Story arcs - Contra the archivist note, these categories no longer abound, as per this thread. We don't have categories for story arcs anymore. We might reintroduce something similar soon in another namespace. But the main namespace probably isn't the right place for it.

Forum:What counts as an enemy? - Prelude to removing "enemies" categories, and I think the first time I've seen clean category management used in reasoning in a thread.

Forum:Navigation Templates - Archivist note here is solid. Useful as a historical note for moving to navboxes.

Forum:Artifacts or Artefacts of Rassilon? - One of the only spelling/punctuation discussions that's actually interesting.

Forum:More canon questions - No clear resolution, but has Tangerine and Czech disagreeing over whether the Cushing films are "canon" in an alternate universe, similar to Unbound.

Forum:Introduction of Portal Pages - Archivist note is good. This is a prelude to a later discussion concerning transmats.

Forum:(TV story) inclusion - Failed proposal at the time, something similar won the day. Every TV story now has the (TV Story) postfix.

Forum:We need a policy relating to disambiguation pages - Not sure why this is labeled failed. It seems to be the basis for T:DAB.

Forum:Why were citation templates deleted? - Hmm. I'd need to see the old templates to have the full understanding of this discussion. But this one is fairly interesting in terms of citation policy and editing / making things accessible.

Forum:Discontinuity revisited - And this is where we moved discontinuity out of the main namespace.

Forum:People from archive footage - Somewhat relevant to a later discussion we had about characters appearing vs merely being alluded to.

Forum:Character infobox image standards? - Origin of a lot of our image policies, including our "characters look left" standard. (Good standard.)

Forum:Archiving talk pages - Beginning of archiving policy.

Forum:Timeline pages - Moving timelines from main namespace.

Forum:Dates and the "st" "nd" and "th"s - Absolutely categorically do not use superscripts on this wiki in the main namespace.

Forum:The Howling, getting a little out of control - Reigning in the forums, making The Howling in particular more specifically about certain topics and less a free for all.

Forum:Is using "First Doctor", "Second Doctor" etc in-universe? - Kinda.

Forum:Is there a need for quote pages? - No there is not. And, indeed, we no longer do.

Forum:We decide NOT to move off wikia.com because of new Wikia skin - These periodic discussions whether or not we'll move off of wiki are always interesting, and might I say that W:Forum:Anti-Wikia Alliance is absolutely hilarious in terms of how many times it's been deleted.

Forum:Name of the wiki - revisit - Disagreement over whether the wiki inherently covers the broader DWU or just happens to do so. A nuanced point.

Forum:Is capitalisation enough to distinguish two articles? - No real discussion here, but I think the current MoS says that you should try to distinguish by more than capitalization.

Forum:Is in-character linking narration canonical? - Interesting discussion but I think we've moved past this on the wiki. I think current consensus is that things like Ian Chesterton: An Introduction (home video) are near universally valid.

Forum:Pre-Airing episode articles - Arguably the origin of the policy that we don't create pages for episodes before they air.

Forum:Premature character page creation - Etc

Forum:Premature page creation (comics and audios) - Etc

Forum:Premature page policies - again - Etc

Forum:The Adventure Games - Never answered, but I can answer it now. As a weird historical note, The Adventure Games were advertised as being "episodes" of the show in some of the original press material. I'm not sure how much that influenced wiki related policy, but there was a reasonable push for them in the marketing to be seen as just as integral to the S5 experience as the episodes on TV. I suspect that this is part of why they're some of the few video games that the wiki takes to be valid, since the BBC was very very emphatic on that point, with the validity rules for video games sort of molding themselves around The Adventure Games in order to disqualify as much as possible while allowing those to stay. But this is me speculating on subconscious motivations of people from 10 years ago. So take it with a large dose of salt. See also User talk:CzechOut/Archive 2

Forum:Thumbnails - Czech's perspective here failed to win the day, but I think this is an interesting discussion on graphic design and thumbnail captions.

Forum:We need a policy on videogames - Oof. The thread that has gaslit everyone into thinking that gameplay is narrative. The beginning in a long line of awful discussions over video game policy. -->

Talk pages, 2010
User talk:Sulfur - Nothing super important, but has a lot of details related to technical aspects of how bots are set up on this wiki.

Talk:Cyberman/Archive 1 - Starts in 2010, carries on into 2011, some of this is also briefly mentioned in Forum:Blood of the Cybermen - how to define them, there's a lot of discussion on how to merge the varying accounts of Cybermen, a problem the wiki has largely grown past.

Talk:The Vault of Secrets (TV story) - To see how our older spoiler policies allowed articles for shows to be created before air date.

Talk:Time field/Archive 1 and then by proxy Talk:Time field - dear lord. We had to have a thread years later, when I was on wiki, to sort this out. Awful, awful thing.

Talk:Fred/Archive 1 - Discussion of whether Party Animals (comic story) is valid and comparing it to BBV due to the character in question.

Talk:Whoisdoctorwho.co.uk - Small discussion of a tiny bit of plagiarism, as well as whether the site is "canon".

Talk:The Curse of Fatal Death (TV story) - Tangerine endorsing R4bp in 2010. :P

Talk:The Doctor - List of Mentions - Overly broad list article deleted.

Talk:Rory Williams (Auton) - Arguably the basis for continuity of consciousness? First serious discussion I've noticed about it.

Talk:Lad (The Next Doctor) - Say it with me everyone, "yet another prelude to Talk:Howling Halls/Archive 1."

Tardis Talk:Tardis Manual/Archive 1 - Small changes to the MoS that chronicle how it evolved.

Tardis Talk:Tardis Manual/Archive 1 - Proposal to allow present tense for IU recurring objects. No love.

Talk:Eighth Doctor/Archive 1 - In general a reasonable comment, given that it emphasizes that the narrative is a dream within a computer, but, you know:
 * it just doesn't make sense that an American comic book company would decide that they were going to do what RTD has steadfastly refused to do. The BBC still have editorial control over IDW's DW output.

C'mon.

Talk:TV21 - I think this has the first reference I've seen to stage plays being invalid that I've seen. I could have missed something due to my own biases since I actually think it's uncontroversial that they stay invalid. So there might be something prior to this. Take me saying this is the first with a grain of salt. But there's a comment about it and it seems they were kinda ambiguous at the time.

Talk:The Simpsons - Discussion of merit of RW page based on IU references to the RW thing, or to the RW thing referencing DW.

Talk:Necronomicon - Making a comment about a particular entity in the DWU that is both fictional and real per different accounts and how it was difficult to deal with this. Apparently at the time only Sherlock Holmes had the same status. This is... No longer the case.

Talk:2000 - Discussion of how to deal with disagreement IU about dating systems on a structural level. It also contains the following:
 * If we take stories absolutely on their word, will articles like gravity end up looking satirical like TFWiki's articles (see hard hats)?

God I hope so.

User talk:Mini-mitch/Archive Talk - Details some of the hoops that some of the older admins had to jump through. Interesting to note that it was thought that IU pages allowed for "greater creativity" than OOU pages.

Talk:Story arc - Just constant difficulties with defining this content. Repeated frustration over it.

Preludes to R4bp in the discussions here, here, here, and at Talk:The Curse of Fatal Death (TV story)

User talk:Ghastly9090 - As far as I can tell, this is the best place to go to look at the discussion surrounding the (failed) SJA wiki.

User talk:Tangerineduel - Old version of this page has a lot of discussion from Czech about main page revision and some coding stuff. Not policy informative per se, but useful to keep a link to somewhere.

Talk:Cobalt bomb - explicit statement of T:NO RW.

Talk:Earth - List of appearances/Archive 1 - "list is too big" is explicitly affirmed as a reason for deletion, as priorly stated with "mentions of Doctor".

Talk:List of planets - Affirmation that main namespace pages shouldn't creep into replacing categories.

Talk:Howling Halls/Archive 1 - The basis for our idea of "no article too small".

Template talk:Hospitals - Arguably the discussion that establishes the basis for allowing navboxes for a wide variety of things.

Threads, 2011
Forum:How to update front page - Some historical context about how the philosophy of front page design has evolved.

Forum:Tech note: Howling in Recent Wiki Activity - The decision to remove Howling:The Howling from recent activity.

Forum:"Mentions" field being deactivated - More discussion of the idea of "mentions" lists.

Forum:Tech note: Forum and talk page upgrade - Not sure if there was ever an update on this. But there would potentially be extensions for the wiki where users auto indent and sign forum posts.

Forum:Tech note: Image use policy change - Unilateral image policy change. Yay.

Forum:Near-human - Oh my god no this is a horrible idea how was this not immediately shot down. Wild violation of T:NO RW for just pure speculation based on some vague references. See Talk:Near-human and Thr:120763 as well. Good on Czech for purging this page in 2013 with extreme prejudice.

Forum:Where are the two Human Natures set? - Dismissal of reference works.
 * If we were to cite reference works, Polly Wright would be Polly Lopez (REF: The Universal Databank), Oswald Danes would be Oswald Jones (DWM 427), and we'd be at a real loss to explain which of the various cutaway schematics of Daleks was "correct". (various Dalek annuals and other reference works) We'd also have to take The Doctor Who Technical Manual as an important work that, for instance, gives us a totally true and accurate schematic of K9 and the sonic screwdriver. All these reference works, are of course, fine to cite in behind-the-scenes sections. But we must resist the urge to use them in our in-universe sections, because they are largely just the opinions of particular authors, writing to a commercial deadline.

Because nothing else on this wiki is weird or contradictory. Not one bit.

Forum:Wirrn vs. Wirrrn - A pretty nuanced point about what "official" sources tell us and what the actual author's intent was for a concept's name - when the "official" sources have limited legal rights to the concept. Doesn't get a ton of love.

Forum:Release date of early DWM issues - Question about "cover" release dates vs actual release dates. No real movement, and it's a problem we still occasionally encounter in some areas today.

Forum:Sycorax's planet of origin? - Yet more dismissal of ref works.

Forum:Bayldon Copper? - Ultimately I think this becomes precedent for the question "can a redirect exist based on bts info and/or early editions of a script".

Forum:2entertain Shada - Beginning of the discussion on how to handle the nuances related to Shada.

Forum:Alienation of new and IP users - Floating ideas on how to make the wiki more accessible. It's something we still struggle with to this day, and I know I'm not innocent in this problem, as I can be a bit feisty. But we really do need to address this, and there are some interesting thoughts on how to start. Maybe a place to revisit.

Forum:A few changes? - Useful ideas we might want to revisit. Recently (2023) there was some discussion of having "short summaries" in addition to long ones, and there's a vaguely similar idea here. Also a suggestion of an official recommendation to leave edit summaries when reverting others' work.

Forum:Background - Some technical work related to background images, as well as detailing where policy stood at the time.

Forum:Character information on novels, etc - Oh my God, this was near incomprehensible without looking at the pages referenced in the time frame. It's premised on a way of writing articles that just doesn't exist anymore. (EG) Absolutely disgusting, great change. See also Forum:Should novels & audio stories have a plot description?, which established that novels and audios should have plot sections - when up until 2011 they didn't. That and lack of editors willing to write them explains why so many are empty.

Forum:Charity anthology short stories RIP charity anthologies, all of three people.

Forum:Clarification on what a pseudo-historical is. - Yes, historical and pseudo-historical are bad terms, but clearly these people are overthinking it because history ended in 1992.

Forum:Could we create article for each Cybermen Mark/Model?, Forum:The Unspecified Cyberman Debate - GAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. These threads. These threads these threads these threads. These threads caused reference works to be totally and completely invalid for 10+ years as opposed to just "secondary sources". Why. Just why.

Forum:Gallifreyan history and History of the Daleks? - Alluding to the idea that we should maybe move some rather convoluted and contradictory histories to an "essay" namespace.

Forum:Home Era, and Forum:Home Era layout (and earlier Forum:20th/21st century individuals). - Discussion over part of the infobox that has long since fallen out of favor. Useful for seeing why it did so, I guess. It's a mess.

Forum:Magazine Reference - Interestingly, something like this for individual (non recurring) articles was kinda sorta tried and explicitly shot down earlier.

Forum:NO SPOILERS at the Panopticon - An understandable worry, but one that actually harms editing of upcoming issues! Making it clear where there are spoilers and to what extent they exist, while being as vague as possible, is probably the best we can do while still doing our job effectively.

Forum:Next Time trailer - And with time all things move on. BBC does this now, we now link these trailers.

Forum:No colourised pics, but what about comics? - Discussion of colorized comics, relevant to recent (2023) changes to our image policies.

Forum:References and continuity: what exactly is the difference? - I have no idea, to this day.

Forum:Tags on talk pages - lmao, nothing has made me think fandom is better than going through the old archives and seeing how wikia responded to people.

Forum:Story pages should have reception sections - A surprisingly nuanced discussion. I think a section for "critical analysis" of an episode done through the lens of focused scholarship is something we might want to reconsider. Where precisely we draw the line at the critics to include...? Not sure. But I don't think an out and out reception section is a good idea, often times the mainstream discussion of episodes doesn't have the context to properly analyze the episodes aside from "wow, huh, I enjoyed it". Or "I really don't like this writer, either on a personal or stylistic level, so I'm going to complain". (Yeah, you have to understand who the Morbius Doctors are to be able to comment on The Timeless Children (TV story) - don't @ me. Cold Fusion (novel)? You need to have at least heard of it. Lungbarrow (novel)? Sacred text.)

Forum:Should we class Big Finish's Doctor Who Unbound series as non-canon? - Relevant to a discussion going on at the time of writing, as well as the reform of T:CANON to T:VS. With that said, I've skimmed through some of Rec.arts.drwho. To say
 * Our problem is that we have never adjusted our use of the word "canon" from those early days in 2005 and 2006 when it wasn't the dirty word it is today.

is wild revisionism. Maybe it wasn't for you, but people would often complain about it in the 90s. Cornell's comments don't just come from competing accounts of Human Nature but from 3 different and conflicting accounts of 8's adventures fractioning the fanbase.

Forum:Users should be allowed any youtube video on their user page - Discussion of loosening T:VID in some weird ways imo.

Forum:Novelisations info - Not inuniverse - Discussion of "canonicity of novelizations". No longer applicable.

Forum:Alternate timelines vs. parallel worlds - A problem that still plagues us to this day, see Talk:Dust Devil (audio story).

Forum:UNIT aren't really companions, Forum:Add Ganger Amy as companion in series 6, Forum:Companions - who counts? - Companion discussions never get resolution. Horrible topic.

Forum:Judeo-Christian God: how to title the article - Somewhat topical as of time of writing, see discussion at Talk:God (mythology).

Forum:Clarification on how to cite of out-of-universe information - It's almost like in-universe reference works should have been "primary sources" the entire time and never invalidated. :P

Forum:Speculation - What is and what isn't? - A lot of meaty discussion here, and I'm now convinced that Howling Halls is the single most important page on this wiki.

Forum:How should we deal with link rot? - Something to revisit. We really need to think about this, as well as also archiving all of our forum threads when finished, just to make sure we don't lose archives again.

Forum:How to categorise Virgin New Adventure preludes - Helpful precedent for later issues, but not super interesting.

Forum:Implications of US premiere for our Torchwood Miracle Day coverage - Hmm, some hinting towards differences in versions around the world and how that might impact coverage. No clear resolution, or if it was even a real issue at the time.

Forum:TVM Bruce and Miranda: Gerhardt or not? - Overturned, but explicit statement that novelization name additions can't be used.

Forum:BBV and canon policy - Much has been revised, but of clear historical importance. I note that User:Tangerineduel actually brought up The Adventure of the Diogenes Damsel, which was later used in the 2017 discussion that reinstated FP. See also Forum:How do we best include Faction Paradox on the wiki?. Based on some fundamental misunderstandings of the issue and some outdated perspectives. But of clear historical importance. (Licensing Sutekh and the Sontarans for a distinctly different fictional universe, a la humans in Star Wars? Absurd.)

Forum:Canon policy: Items on which policy is unclear - More of the history of reference guides becoming invalid.

Forum:Is The Curse of Fatal Death canon? - And six months after proto R4bp is floated, it dies a death. CoFD is very much fatally dead for the next 9.5 years.

Forum:Proposed change to spoiler policy - Useful historical note that went nowhere. Specifically about cast/crew not necessarily being a spoiler, at least in one proposed change.

Forum:John and Gillian - Since been overturned.

Forum:Cliffhangers in Plot breakdown - Deserves documenting, I get why the format is the way it is. I just don't like it, as someone who write plot summaries, I think plot writers should have creative freedom. With that said:
 * Thus, if you wished to change that policy, you'd have to prove a case against it.

Forum:Exception to video policy: advertisements - Need to look more into the surrounding changes to FANDOM's vid stuff, but possibly useful.

Forum:Moving the tables of content to the right - Interesting design notes here, nothing super important, but useful to note.

Forum:Site fonts: your opinion needed - Interesting, imo, because of the comments about how to enforce MoS vs educate people on MoS.

Forum:Doctorwhospoilers.com is not a valid resource - Astonishing prejudice against Arkansas, and I think this is saying that even rumors should come from trusted sites? (Especially in conjunction with Forum:What makes a rumour?)

Forum:Brilliant Book 2011: a valid source? - It is now!

Forum:Leads on story pages - Classified as a policy changer, not really sure it is. Most of our ledes aren't like this, and one of the things Czech says is most important is no longer present. Seems to be more page specific? idk.

Forum:Edit warring prevention policy - Should be noted, not much here.

Forum:Production team members who become characters in the DWU - Aha, here's the "TV Action" precedent. See Talk:Hugh Grant, Talk:John Hurt (in-universe), and our new T:DAB IU.

Forum:"Human" shouldn't be capitalised - Sure, whatever, but
 * Honestly, you'd think this wiki was written by Germans Who Speak English as a Second Language sometimes.

is a banger line.

Forum:Meanwhile in the TARDIS - Thread says TV, but currently we use HOMEVID.

Forum:Story names should be automatically disambiguated - Thread that establishes postfixes for stories.

Forum:Image appropriateness issue - Suffice it to say that... This thread took an unrealistically optimistic stance towards what people would try to sneak on the wiki from the DWU. This has since been slightly amended.

Forum:We need a species tab on the homepage - Weird origin stuff for transmats?

Forum:The Master - 1 article recapping Forum:The Master which has been overturned.

Forum:Can we disable visual editor please? - Can we do this again please?

Forum:Copying your own work from Wikipedia to TARDIS Index File wiki - Somewhat related to T:DON'T COPY.

Talk pages, 2011
Talk:Dalek history - some early discussion of the possibility of an Essay namespace or suchlike. Interesting discussion of an analysis that doesn't really translate, I think, to a timeline quite right. But it's the genesis of timeline pages, even if they're not 1-1.

Talk:Series 6 (Doctor Who)/Archive 3 - "Every canonical televised Doctor Who must be on BBC One. It can't be canon." Compared to A Fix with Sontarans (TV story). People were not convinced.

Talk:Blue Humanoid - See also Forum:Proposed Deletion of Blue, Red and White humanoids - Yes or No. Not even sure what to say about this except some very strong statements against speculation, perhaps on the subject of visual appearance? idk

Talk:Alexa Havins - Relevant to our recent update to spoiler policy.

User Talk:Revanvolatrelundar/Archive 1, User talk:CzechOut/Archive 3 - the beginning of a later discussion about the validity of Graceless.

User talk:CzechOut/Archive 4, User Talk:Revanvolatrelundar/Archive 1, User talk:CzechOut/Archive 4 - What led to Forum:Is The Curse of Fatal Death canon?
 * While the story is essentially a parody, PROSE: The Tomorrow Windows portrays the events of this story as occuring in an alternate timeline for the Eighth Doctor's immediate future. The community decided that we should canonize this story due to it being directly mentioned in a canon story.

User Talk:Revanvolatrelundar/Archive 2, User Talk:CzechOut/Archive 6 - quick notes about why a spinoff was made invalid.

Talk:A Textbook of Botany for Students - Small little discussion, and I do mean small, of how to deal with real world books that are so old that don't have ISBNs. No conclusion.

User Talk:Skittles the hog/Archive 4 - If it's obviously the case that a name / job title is going to need to be disambiguated in the future, it makes sense to do so when creating the page.

User Talk:Skittles the hog/Archive 5 - Evidence that blocks used to be much shorter. In addition, this, User Talk:CzechOut/Archive 3, User Talk:Skittles the hog/Archive 5, and User Talk:CzechOut/Archive 3 might arguably constitute the first discussion of T:BOUND?

User Talk:Skittles the hog/Archive 6, User Talk:CzechOut/Archive 4 - Some musings on when and when not to protect a heavily trafficked, plot significant page.

Talk:Mechanoid - Doctor Who was a mistake.

User Talk:Mini-mitch/Archive Talk 7, User Talk:CzechOut/Archive 5 - Self explanatory imo.

User talk pages to explore:
User talk:CzechOut User talk:Tangerineduel User talk:Azes13 User talk:23skidoo User talk:Forgetful 10th doctor fan User talk:MrThermomanPreacher User talk:Josiah Rowe User talk:BroadcastCorp User talk:OttselSpy25 User talk:Americanwhofan Done:User talk:The Librarian User talk:Skittles the hog User talk:Mini-mitch User talk:Rob T Firefly User talk:Nyktimos User talk:Revanvolatrelundar User talk:Noneofyourbusiness User talk:Icecreamdif User talk:Bold Clone User talk:Ebyabe User talk:Tybort User talk:Shambala108 User talk:Gousha User talk:Imamadmad User talk:Doug86 User talk:GusF

For sorting later:
2012 https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:%22Companions_of_the_Nth_Doctor%22_Templates https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:%22Setting%22_in_story_infoboxes_and_UNIT_dating https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Audio_Visuals https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Any_way_the_Audios_can_be_updated_on_the_front_page https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Bug_in_the_Game_of_Rassilon https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Can_this_wikia_get_an_upgraded_theme%3F_The_current_one_is_beyond_ugly. https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Character_Profiles_on_K9_DVDs https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:DWM_issues:_please_help_(re)write_leads https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Disambiguation:_Omegas https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Distant_past/Far_future_categories https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Doctor_Who_and_the_Related_Videos_Spambot https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Doctor_Who_prefix_in_titles https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Doctor_Who_webcasts https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Foreshadowing_section_on_Doctors_pages https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Image_names https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Individual_ranked_Cybermen https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Layout_and_navigation_updates_October_3 https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Leela_Audio_Story_category https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Living_versions_of_paintings https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Meanwhile_in_the_TARDIS:_Differentiating_the_scenes https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:New_past_Doctor_stories:_PDA%3F https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:One_of_the_only https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Overhaul_of_%27mini-episode%27_articles https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Page_images_for_DWBIT_comic_stories https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Prefix_simplification https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Reference_books_-_what_do_we_cover%3F https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:References_to_BFDWU_as_alternate_or_diverging_timeline https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Removing_stubs https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Rumours_and_their_sources https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:SJA_and_companions_of_the_Doctor https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Should_Cyber-Leader,_Cyber-Controller_and_Cyber-Lieutenant_be_split%3F https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Should_Doctor_Who_(1996)_be_Doctor_Who_(TV_story)%3F https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Story_Numbering https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Text_not_showing_up_on_Laurence_Payne_page https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Thanks_for_using_British_spellings https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:The_Dalek_Conquests_prefix https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:The_Destroyers_and_other_Lost_Stories https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Two_questions_on_DWBIT_comics_pages https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Undated_and_unchronicled_events https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Wantedpages https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:What%27s_the_focus_on_the_Cyber-Controller_page%3F https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:What_%22voice_actor%22_means_on_this_wiki https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Where_do_all_TARDIS_Index_File_articles_lead_to%3F