User:SOTO/Forum Archive/Inclusion debates/@comment-1432718-20170915033630/@comment-24894325-20171129001545

I think it is good to discuss this exactly because it is tricky. My feeling, based on the presented precedents, is that there was something left implicit in those discussions, and that is why it is not entirely clear how to apply them here.

The following is my thoughts, which may or may not correspond to the original intent of those discussions. It would also be great if people who participated in those discussions elaborated their positions.

Firstly, I agree that defining "advertisement" as something to make you buy a product is both too simplistic and too narrow. Narrow because watching a BBC programme is not really buying things. Simplistic because many marketing tricks can be described this way. If a short story is made available for free to make you interested in the range, it should not automatically invalidate it.

Secondly, a trailer is a reasonably well-defined thing: "an advertisement for a film or a television or radio programme, consisting of short parts taken from it"

- Cambridge Dictionary

But at the very least, trailer must be attached to a story, whereas an advertisement can relate to a story, merchandise, or anything else.

If I were to opine myself on why advertisements should be universally invalid, I would say that they actually break Rule 4. The main purpose of an advertisement is to highlight something out-of-universe rather than to tell a story (even if a story is present). If the primary goal is to sell TARDIS Tuners in RW, this is hardly a reason to accept TARDIS Tuners in-universe. Similarly, if the goal is to highlight the Luther Christmas Special at BBC, this is hardly a justification for Luther becoming an in-universe character. This would look like a commercialised real-world bleed.

Trailers, on the other hand, are attached to a story anyways. (There can also be other types of advertisements for stories.) The standard trailers are, indeed, just fragments of the story being advertised and, again, it is a no brainer to exclude them. Same for non-narrative advertisements. These cases violate Rule 1 (and possibly 4 if the advertisement is out-of-universe).

Finally, we get to the case of Transmission from Mars and this trailer. Various prequels are to me of the same ilk. In all these cases, there is a separate short story highlighting, and typically closely connected to, the main story. Seems important that the main story is standalone and valid on its own terms.

So this is the possible implicit categorisation behind the current rules. If a trailer/advertisement is
 * not a story - not valid by Rule 1;
 * story tied to a non-story (e.g., merchandise) - not valid by Rule 4;
 * story tied to a non-DWU story - not valid by Rule 4;
 * story tied to a DWU story - may be valid. I don't think in these cases validity should be automatic, but it can, in principle, be considered as Transmission from Mars shows.

Once again, this is my reverse engineering of past debates. As a matter of course, it is good to understand the motivation behind the rules, whether the community manages to remember it or renegotiate it anew.