Board Thread:Inclusion debates/@comment-31010985-20190928203157/@comment-31010985-20191011214047

Bwburke94 has yet again hit the nail on the head. To further his point, this official policy page states that "fans grew up and became part of the professional "industry" of Doctor Who". This shows that Merriam-Webster's definition of fan fiction stands as representative of lots of other perfectly valid web stories published by major companies such as the BBC as well.

Obviously, we can't use this definition to rule over T:NO FANFIC for one very simple reason: they are not talking about the same thing. T:NO FANFIC has been precisely calibrated over the years to apply to this wiki and this wiki alone (it's been created with rule 2 in mind) whereas Merriam-Webster's definition is defining a broad term that is used by everyone or in other words, the general public. It would be ludicrous if their definition included links to our user page and video policies as helpful clarifications now, wouldn't it?

The reason why self-publishing is different is, as I've said many times, there is absolutely nothing is wiki policy that invalidates stories produced by self-publishers hence why the best option available to us is to quote from a trusted online dictionary and apply their common sense meaning to this situation.

Also also, I'll add to the reminder for you to name the admins involved in the original decision in your next post.