Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-24894325-20151229103324/@comment-24894325-20160122164220

Okay, I'm almost back to DWU.

My proposal is based on the model of a Whovian as someone who is only aware of some part of the DWU. This part can be larger or smaller, but I'd hazard a guess that very few of us are familiar with TV and AUDIO and COMIC and PROSE. Worse than that, many of us do not care to be acquainted with all of them. The reasons can be multiple: from the lack of money to buy everything to the desire to minimize inconsistencies. Yes the latter desire runs contrary to the policies of this Wikia. But I believe the policies should be applied to articles, not to users. If I am not willing to entertain the alternative stories from Lungbarrow (novel) for the time being, I still should be able to navigate this Wikia.

Notwithstanding the neutral point of view policy, I tried to imagine various information flows a person can exist in. I know I am completely separate from books and comic books: so no reference to them is useful for me. This also means that I cannot suggest an efficient way of implementing this proposal for these two media (in the standard sense). I simply do not understand the information flows there.

Let me replace the term medium, which I used to misuse, by a neutral one: DW source, a source of DW stories. For me the DW series is a source (maybe even two sources). Torchwood is another source. Sara Jane Chronicles is a third. Big Finish audios is a source. AudioGo audios is another source.

Where is the boundary of a source? How do I determine that this is the end of one source and the beginning of the other? By the way information about it is presented by the producer and by way the character is introduced in the story. Why do I think that Torchwood is its own source but BF Main Range belongs to the same source as Companion Chronicles (I do not pick the hardest examples on purpose)? Because I am likely to check BF website when checking the Main Range releases and there is information about Companion Chronicles there. Because Behind-the-Scenes mention characters jumping back-and-forth. Because subscribing to the Main Range I get a discount for the Chronicles. So, in my mind, a person interested in the Main Range would be aware of Companion Chronicles and vice versa. Here's a simple example: when you see Charley in the companion chronicle Solitaire (audio story), she is not introduced as a new character, and I fail to imagine a person considering the information about her prior travels with the Eighth Doctor irrelevant.

By contrast, if you turn on Netflix and start watching Torchwood, you don't get much info about Doctor Who. Jack Harkness gets an introduction. References back are done in such a way that one does not need to watch Doctor Who. The case of Sara Jane is even clearer as it was intended for younger viewers, for whom supposedly Doctor Who was not yet appropriate. Also it's hard to require all Whovians to watch something they might dismiss as a teeny show.

So yes, for me each TV series is a separate DW source because I can imagine people watching one and not being aware/caring to be sufficiently aware of the other. In other words, I break the medium TV into DW sources by series name. I apply a different principle to the medium AUDIO based on my own experience. I break AUDIO into DW sources by producer. If you listen to Big Finish, you may not be able to buy all of their releases, but you are likely to treat them all with equal respect and would benefit from the knowledge of other appearances of the same character because there exist story arcs connecting different ranges. At the same time, various other audiobooks produced by AudioGo I am truly not aware of. They have a different production team, I cannot be sure this production team sees eye-to-eye with the BF one. I have the right to concentrate on one of them.

Bottomline. If I watch Doctor Who, it is somewhat likely that I've never seen a title of a single Torchwood story. If I listen to Big Finish, it is rather likely that I've never seen any AudioGo titles. If I watch new Doctor Who, I am likely to pick up some relevant/famous classic story names. If I listen to BF Main Range, I am likely to bump into story names from other ranges on the website, in the Vortex, in the CD Extras, etc.

How the book and comic strip readers search for information, I don't know. My first guess would be by producer: If I'm browsing through Titan Comics on Comixology, I am likely to see various titles by them. But if anything is decided, an input from those familiar with these media will be needed.

Now, if we assume that for each two DW sources, S1 and S2, there is a person interested in S1 but not aware of S2 where a character first appeared, this person would benefit from the proposed redirect from Character (First story in S1) to the actual page Character (First story in S2).

My guess is that there would be not too many of such redirects needed. If a character was reused, he/she/it/they are usually important enough to be given a unique name. If a character is used in more than two sources requiring multiple redirects, he might turn out to be a primary topic, so that redirects would not be needed.