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)


 * For what it's worth, the Doctor Who WikiProject at Wikipedia has decided on using British spellings, as stated here.

--Freethinker1of1 21:12, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

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)

New In-universe format
I just have a few questions about the new format for the In-universe articles. I can't see an other problems yet in the format. Good job. -Azes13 23:40, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Shouldn't the stub be at the bottom, above Category and below External Links?
 * 2) Do we really need both Appearances and Sources? I'm not sure where they wouldn't overlap (since most information is gained from the serials and such)
 * 3) When would the See also not be shown with hyperlinks in the article? If there's another important article, I'm sure you'd mention it in this one.

Additions to the MoS
I originally posted these straight to the MoS, but since these are major additions I thought I would seek opinion first before making them "official":

Acceptable sources
Generally speaking, most professionally published sources are fair game, with added weight given to sources with direct connection to the Doctor Who franchise, such as press releases from the BBC, Doctor Who Magazine, and interviews/columns/other material written by individuals directly connected with the show, such as writers, producers and actors.

However, Doctor Who also attracts a large amount of media coverage that is dubious in its accuracy. Of particular concern is so-called "tabloid press" coverage in the UK, which is often fraught with inaccuracies and/or unsubstantiated rumors cited as fact. Care should be taken, both in biographical real-world articles and in-universe articles, that the source cited is actually accurate. For example, tabloid press in the UK widely reported that Kylie Minogue was to play a Cyberman in DW: Voyage of the Damned. More recently, a tabloid put forth the claim that Claire Bloom's character in DW: The End of Time was the Doctor's mother, despite Russell T. Davies stating in podcast commentary that the identity has been left ambiguous.

As noted above, some sources should not be considered authoritative due to lack of review. These include Wikipedia, the Internet Movie Database, and fan forums and BBSes. Use of material from these sources is not prohibited, but effort should be made to find reputable sources as soon as possible.

Neutral point of view
As this wiki is effectively a large fan site, it can be difficult to maintain a neutral point of view about contentious issues, whether discussing a discontinuity or error on an episode page, or avoiding superlatives - or criticisms - in biographical pages. Such language should be avoided, or if desired, a source should be provided. For example, point-of-view writing might be: "Romana I was a beautiful companion"; if one wanted to make the same point, but do so in a neutral way, one might write "Romana I had long dark hair and the Doctor once acknowledged that she was physically attractive (DW: The Pirate Planet)". Other descriptors which may fall into the category of "matters of personal taste" should be avoided: "The Eleventh Doctor has an annoying voice", for example, unless a story establishes this to be a fact (i.e. a character makes reference to this), in which case the comment could be made, with a story citation.

A unique aspect of this Wiki's treatment of Discontinuities and Errors sections is that editors can add possible rationales, explanations, and even rebuttals to errors cited by others. This section, however, is not a forum, and therefore avoid statements like: "I think you're wrong". Instead, either edit the comment to reflect the correct information, or write something like: "Another possible explanation is...". When applicable, cite sources when posting rebuttals/corrections in these sections.

Talk pages
Although Talk Pages don't need to follow the same strict style and content guidelines as article pages, there are still some rules that should be observed.

First, Talk Pages should be used only for discussion on how to improve/change the article in question. Discussion of personal opinion regarding a story or individual should not be included on a talk page, except in discussing whether a certain piece of information should be corrected or changed. Discussion of rumors outside the context of whether to include/remove from the article, should also be avoided.

Also, the guidelines above regarding articles on living people also apply to talk pages. Material that is libellous or defamatory must be removed immediately.

Otherwise, however, deletion of other people's comments and threads is considered vandalism. Similarly, changing other people's posts beyond simple spelling error correction is not allowed unless you first get the original poster's permission.

If no one objects to these additions, I'll put them into the article shortly. 23skidoo 20:31, January 17, 2010 (UTC)