User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-26285319-20170104192003/@comment-24894325-20170125151259

Hmm... I think I found a loophole, a loophole that is being exploited again and again in many inclusion debates as we speak. The requirement that the author explicitly states that the story was intended to be outside DWU is way too stringent. Take The Sign of Four for instance. I think it passes the four little rules with flying colours. It is a story. It was commercially licensed at the time of its release. It was officially released. And I'm pretty sure Arthur Conan-Doyle never explicitly stated that he intended it to be outside the DWU.

Ridiculous, you would say. Clear case, you would say. Just use your common sense, you would say. I know, I know. But do please reread T:VALID. The only mention of DWU is in Rule 4 and Rule 4 is rarely invoked because there are very few stories which are deliberately set outside the normal DWU continuity. Well, that's just simply not the case anymore if you look at all outstanding inclusion debates. Because now people want to include everything that has a slightest tangential connection to DWU. You say Zygon, they say DWU. You say Tom Baker, they say DWU. You say "The Diary of a Dr. Who Fan", they say DWU.

I think inclusion should require intent to be inside the DWU expressed by the author, production team, or copyright holder. Because if you're not writing for DWU, you're not gonna expressly state that the story is not for DWU. So all those authors who just take a character they created for some DWU story and take it on a complete tangent, not caring in the slightest about DWU or continuity---of course, they would be crazy to spit in the face of all DWU fans and say: this is a completely different thing, get off. So they smartly keep mum or hazy on the subject (in absolute majority of cases). Thus, their defenders can come and say: he never said this series is outside DWU, so let's include it. Well, of course, he didn't, duh.

The Four little rules should require the intent to be part of DWU as a prerequisite instead of considering all stories to be part of it unless stated otherwise.