Forum:Temporary forums/10,000 Dawns crossovers (Final Round)

Opening post
Since we now have Fandom's permission, right here in black and white, the time has come to tie off one of our remaining loose ends from the Lost Forums...

As foretold by an ancient closing post, we are here to examine...

The 10,000 Dawns crossovers
Alright, today, we review the validity of the following prose stories, which were crossovers between the Doctor Who universe and the 10,000 Dawns franchise. There was some confusion on this point in the past, so let's restate clearly, for those in the back, that the topic of discussion is validity for the following already-covered crossover stories, not greater coverage of the 10,000 Dawns series itself.

Most of these feature DWU elements which debuted in Doctor Who proper, including Coloth from the Short Trips story War Crimes and no less than Miranda Dawkins, the Eighth Doctor's daughter, as seen in the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures. A few are slightly more tangential, bringing in DWU concepts that debuted in the Faction Paradox series, such as Auteur and Littlejohn... but, for those of us who have been around for the change of tide, and need reminding, it's well-established by now that Faction Paradox's coverage on this wiki is as "prime" DWU material.

In any case, Rachel Survived, White Canvas, The Gendar Conspiracy and Birthdays are Made for Memories form a narratively interlinked run of stories — so if one of them is agreed to take place in the DWU, I don't think we could reasonably exclude the others, particularly as they all share a writer. So all for one and one for all. We're taking these together.

Background
In the original series of threads, there was much made of the notion that, as these stories were published on the Internet freely, we had no evidence that they were truly licensed. However, even setting aside the imbalanced weight of evidence for a case like this, with the release of The Outer Universe Collection on 29 August 2019, this point was well and truly put to rest, so let's please not retread that whole area of debate unless new, reliable evidence surfaces. Baseless aspersions will not be tolerated. We should never, as a community, have assumed wrongdoing.

The foreword of The Outer Universe Collection also described the three stories within as "10,000 Dawns / Universe of Doctor Who crossover stories", finally putting an end to any quibbling around Rule 4 along those lines.

As a brief history lesson, these were the subject of multiple successive inclusion debates in the final years of Special:Forum, with the final attempt being deleted from the site by Fandom Staff after a user stooped to doxxing one of the editors arguing for validity. This had been meant to be one last chance for dissenting voices to come forward with good-faith arguments against, after all previous attempts had similarly devolved into improper forum use. Now, at this point, as established by my previous closing statement, the burden of proof was on those who would see these stories invalidated, else they would get full inclusion by default once the three weeks had elapsed.

I've posted the full closing post as an addendum, but here is the most relevant section, so folks know where things already stood:

Part 4: Where are we now?
As of the time of this thread's closure, I do not see that sufficient evidence has been provided to show that these stories are any different to comparable releases from Candy Jar Books or BBV Productions, which are founded on licensing agreements with individual authors (or their estates). These have a long (and storied) history of being covered. And naturally, we have precedents for short stories released exclusively for the web (see: WEB short stories), including those released in blog format (see: Christmas Special), for stories released for free that make use of known licenses (see: Free Comic Book Day and The Paul Spragg Memorial Short Trip Opportunity) and finally for crossovers (see: Stories that crossover with non-DWU series).

Tardis:Valid sources tells us that we need sufficient evidence that one of the four little rules has in fact been broken, if community discussion is to declare these invalid. But all here seems to be in order.

In point of fact:

The first collection containing these stories has a copyright note on, well, the copyright page, which lists exactly whose rights have been acquired, and the introduction to this same release explicitly states these are "commercially licensed" stories.

We even get this more extensive account:

And as for Rule 4 concerns, this was the tentative conclusion where we left things, in my closing post:

[ Following an analysis of precedent. ] Here, however, we are in no shortage of such evidence for rule 2 — with credits attached to the stories, and statements from the publisher, and statements from some of the authors that they have in fact been involved — and, honestly, I'm not sure that rule 4 has ever been clearer.

Multiple quotes have been drawn up from the publisher indicating, quite clearly, that the intent is for these stories to cross over with the Doctor Who universe. The most salient piece of information, which formed the basis of [the thread in question] — a quote from Wylder which plainly reads, "You can read all three of the 10,000 Dawns stories set in the Doctor Who Universe (for free) here" — was, of course, absent from the last discussion. Another reads, "Getting to play around in the edges of the Whoniverse has been an honor". No matter how you slice it, the intent (which forms the basis of rule 4) has been directly stated.

No practice round
Since the last thread was deleted, User:Borisashton kindly started us off once more on this "fourth and unambiguously final" debate, but alas, it was frozen by over concerns that the doxxing would repeat itself. But now we're long since past all that, and even the victim of the original doxxing incident has privately come forward to inform the admin team that they wished to see the thread re-opened. So here we are again. Unless arguments rooted in T:VS are brought forward within a period of three weeks starting today, the stories listed above will be considered valid sources going forward. Just to cover our bases, this cannot be countermanded, by anyone, in any fashion. Even if this thread somehow becomes interrupted like the final thread in the Lost Forums, before it reaches a proper conclusion, the result of this should still be validation. There is currently no rationale for the stories' invalidity, other than the procedural kink that we never had the chance to fulfil the requirements on that final closure. So until or unless some actual factual reasoning presented here, which can be cited in the leads, is located... This is it. No more.

As you can see on the announcement, Fandom actually told us admins that we could choose to skip the thread altogether if we wanted, just to be on the safe side. We are extending trust to the community by holding this three-week thread properly, at last. Please repay that trust and be on your best behaviour, everyone. 20:52, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Discussion
I think these should be valid, no doubt about it. They're just plain and simple crossovers from what I've heard. Cookieboy 2005 ☎  21:10, 24 April 2023 (UTC)


 * The only reason I can see people being against these is because they don't feature any televised Doctor Who elements. Which of course doesn't matter to this wiki and probably shouldn't. I support validity because others want them to be valid. 81.108.82.15talk to me 21:13, 24 April 2023 (UTC)


 * I support the validity of all the crossover stories listed here. Pluto2 ☎ 21:14, 24 April 2023 (UTC)


 * I support these stories being valid.


 * I personally look at this topic as a turning point for the website. Back in the day, when a crossover like this released users did their due diligence and usually attempted to get broader consensus and admin approval before just blindly covering something as valid. After this debate so infamously fell apart, we entered the current era: "Edit first, ask for forgiveness later." So I think us finding closure not only in this topic, but also understanding that a situation like this will never happen again will do a great deal to help the site heal and grow trust in the new forums.


 * Also, to respond to the point of the anonymous user, I fail to see how a character like Miranda Dawkins is not a "Doctor Who element", as did she not originate in a story with "Doctor Who" on the cover? OS25🤙☎️ 21:15, 24 April 2023 (UTC)


 * If you mean the one on this thread, they did specify "televised". Cookieboy 2005 ☎  21:18, 24 April 2023 (UTC)


 * I apologize. Reading is not my forte, nor is writing as those of you who have read my articles will know. OS25🤙☎️ 21:25, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

As best I understand it, not being present for the original thread, so only seeing the subsequent ones (and recalling those from memory and referencing user talk pages from around the time) a crucial element of User:Amorkuz's objections was that merely releasing a story for free on the personal website of the individual who wrote the story did not constitute an official release. (See User talk:Revanvolatrelundar) Now, some of the situation has changed since the initial objection was made, but at least one of the crossovers still is published solely on a personal website, I believe. (albeit, not the personal website of the author of the story I'm thinking of) Do we buy this? I dunno. We've discussed similar issues in relation to the fan gallery issue with Doctor Who: Lockdown. I'm loathe to link to the discussion for other reasons. But there was no clear resolution to that discussion, we never decided whether A Better World should have a page here.

I think I remember that Amorkuz also wasn't thrilled with Arcbeatle even being considered a "real" publisher, since their books didn't have ISBNs, just ASINs, which is an issue we haven't really resolved on this wiki (see Talk:The Concept of War (novel) for a glance in its direction). I support validity here, make no mistake. But I do think there's some merit to the opposing view. And I think it's unlikely to be mentioned without me stating it. (Hopefully I don't have to defend it.) Najawin ☎  21:58, 24 April 2023 (UTC)


 * I support Validity. Time God Eon ☎  22:05, 24 April 2023 (UTC)


 * @Najawin: It looks like we may (may) have the actual archives to hand before this thread's span is over, but until then, going off of my recollections — I believe it was eventually shown that in fact, despite the URL, jameswylder.com is not a "personal" website, but in fact a business website of Wylder's company Arcbeatle Press. Hence, while the procedural issue was never quite resolved, this is in part because it proved to be subtly irrelevant to the Dawns case.


 * (Though I'll also restate something I said multiple times in the old threads, which is that this is all a big T:BOUND thing. Perhaps there could be merit in a thread discussing these issues, but as it stands there would be no policy objections to a story released on a personal website. Indeed I believe we cover some things in that category currently.) Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 22:12, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

It almost goes without saying that I support validity here. As someone who spent significant time participating in all four of the original discussions there was never any convincing rationale for invalidity and no doubt this was the reason the three stories released at the time of the first debate were originally created as valid.

I'm really glad this fifth (and, this time, definitely final) thread will give the Wiki some proper closure on the matter and allow us to move on from a particularly fraught chapter of the site's history. Borisashton ☎  22:15, 24 April 2023 (UTC)


 * It should be noted, @Najawin, ISBN numbers are decently expensive. As an author about to self publish a book, I've looked into the prices, and in the UK, it costs £80 per ISBN. So a small company can arrange licensing and set up a print on demand arrangement of their books for a cost covered in the sale of each book, but to get an ISBN, it requires money to begin with. I do not feel that is a fair requirement for a source to be covered to have to fulfil.
 * I do support validity, to be clear. 22:15, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

(To be clear, I don't agree with these qualms. I just understand them and think they're prima facie reasonable. It's a nuanced topic, and we should note that. That's all I'm saying.) Najawin ☎  22:16, 24 April 2023 (UTC)


 * I appreciate you bringing up these old arguments Najawin, so we're at least going by the book here. OS25🤙☎️ 22:28, 24 April 2023 (UTC)


 * I was not around for the original debates around this issue, so I can’t really comment on any of it. So I’ll just say I support the validity of these. Danniesen ☎  22:37, 24 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Support Cousin Ettolrahc ☎  05:01, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

I support completely and heavily (and whilst this is definitely not what we are covering here as mentioned in the op I would like to say that should a forum ever be opened about validating the rest of 10,000 Dawns my sentiments would be the same as they are towards the crossovers, but like I said this has nothing to with the main thread)Anastasia Cousins ☎  20:33, 25 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Three and a half years later, it's time to do what we should have done all along. I support validity. bwburke94 (talk) 22:04, 1 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Support validity.Aquanafrahudy ☎  21:02, 9 May 2023 (UTC)