- The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
The result was Delete. Randykitty ( talk) 16:16, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
- List of Doctor Who serials by setting ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log · Stats)
- (Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)
as per discussion Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Doctor_Who#Proposed move of List of Doctor Who serials by setting. it is primarily in-universe and original research. => Spudgfsh ( Text Me!) 14:08, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
- Comment - I believe that this article fails to fall inside the scope of Wikipedia (WP:Not) - chiefly too in-universe. While there are valid ways the settings and time periods depicted in the broadcast Doctor Who episodes may be approached such as prose text on the way the settings may have been chosen (Bob Holmes doing a medieval story at Terrance Dicks request), presented and how they were produced, I do not believe there are Reliable Sources outside fan continuity efforts that treat it in this way. And that - since the mixture of settings and time periods is an accretion of efforts of many individuals down the years - making such an organized list is a mixture of OR and SYNTH. The current list tries to reference facts not stated on-screen by making the links between known history and similar events presented in the fictional setting. GraemeLeggett ( talk) 14:18, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
- Delete - Article can only be achieved through WP:SYNTHESIS and WP:OR. 41.135.172.4 ( talk) 15:19, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
- Delete. This list is so bad that it deserves somebody to go back in time and prevent it from ever existing in the first place. — Scott • talk 23:36, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
- Note: This debate has been included in the list of United Kingdom-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k ( talk) 01:06, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
- Note: This debate has been included in the list of Television-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k ( talk) 01:06, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
- Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science fiction-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k ( talk) 01:06, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
- Note: This debate has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k ( talk) 01:07, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
- Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k ( talk) 01:07, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
- Strong delete There has been much effort put into this page and I want to acknowledge that and I hope its contents can be taken to an appropriate fan wiki. However, I agree with the above comments: I cannot see how this article has any place on Wikipedia given its in-universe perspective, its original research and its synthesis. Indeed, there simply isn't any way for this article to meet basic Wikipedia criteria of WP:RS and WP:V unless it wholesale copies material from external sources like Parkin's Ahistory (which would then be a massive copyright violation!). Bondegezou ( talk) 02:05, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
- 'Delete A great addition to a Wikia, but it's just inappropriate here doktorb words deeds 05:21, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
- Delete - ridiculously confusing, and can't really see the purpose it - other than for fans to spot continuity errors (eg "hey x is set before y, so why does x mention y?") 94.195.107.134 ( talk) 13:36, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
- Delete and offer to Tardis Data Core for transwiki. I already suggested this in the discussion at Wikiproject Doctor Who. G S Palmer ( talk) 18:42, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
- Keep. Whilst I understand the reasoning of the other participants in this discussion, I suspect that it is flawed. I agree with the remarks that as it stands this article is too "in universe" I believe it might be re-cast in a more satisfactory manner. I do not, however, find the article to be original research. If our article on
A Tale of Two Cities says that the story is partly set in 1775 this is not original research, but merely applies a date mentioned in the text, or uses a date looked up from actual historical events described in the text. I thus do not find a breach of
WP:OR. Further, I do not find that there is a breach of
WP:SYNTHESIS, because there doesn't seem to be any actual attempt to advance a "particular position": the information is presented as neutrally as possible given the constraints of chronological order. As for
verifiability, I don't see an overall problem. There may be problems with particular items in this article, but generally if an episode of the show says or clearly demonstrates that it is set in year X then this should be taken at face value, just as we take at face value that the events of
'68 are set in 1968. We don't require a third party to assert this for us. Similarly, it seems reasonable to take the view that, unless there is an
unreliable narrator, the text itself is a reliable source for dating itself. Although there are certainly weaknesses with this article I don't find the current case against it to be strong enough.
RomanSpa (
talk) 12:00, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
- The first entry is an example of Synthesis (definition: [combining "material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources") - Castrovalva ("Event One") c. 13.75 billion BCE with reference to the BBC website guide for the story. The reference does not give a date nor does [a probably fallible] transcript of the episode. An editor has taken the story's statement about heading towards "the big bang" and a scientific prediction of the date and joined them together to create that line. GraemeLeggett ( talk) 13:32, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
- Indeed, a quick glance suggests that a majority of entries involve some degree of synthesis. There are some entries were there is a clear unambiguous dating given, but then I would refer to
WP:NOT/
WP:DISCRIMINATE/
WP:NOTDIR. Why should we have an article with such a list?
Bondegezou (
talk) 14:35, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
- As I've already indicated, there are certainly problems with individual items in this article, but this is not a reason to delete the whole article. By all means, if you think this article could be improved by deleting (for example) the "Castrovalva" item then please do so. The key point about
WP:SYNTHESIS, it seems to me, is not just that material from more than one source must be combined, but that this must be done in such a way as to "reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources". It seems to me that this isn't happening here - all that has been done is some rather tedious clerical work. Do I find the article "indiscriminate"? On balance, probably not. It's certainly more information than most people will ever need, but so is our article on [insert your favorite obscure hobby or interest here :-)]. If anything, I feel the article has been assembled with care and discrimination - though it's a subject that I know little about, I can tell when an article's been thought about carefully by its editors - and it serves a purpose that a simple category would not.
RomanSpa (
talk) 15:57, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
- comment The inherent problem though, is that too many stories are deliberately vague about dating, and there are several contradictory statements. The entire UNIT era for example is a mess of contradictory things (40 years after the 1920s in one, after the cold war in another). Then there's the RTD era where stories can only be sorted in relation to each other - and once you try and shift in Sarah Jane adventures, it's impossible to get them all to work. You just cannot come up wit ha consistent thing, because one simply does not exist. 149.254.218.126 ( talk) 09:19, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
- As I've already indicated, there are certainly problems with individual items in this article, but this is not a reason to delete the whole article. By all means, if you think this article could be improved by deleting (for example) the "Castrovalva" item then please do so. The key point about
WP:SYNTHESIS, it seems to me, is not just that material from more than one source must be combined, but that this must be done in such a way as to "reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources". It seems to me that this isn't happening here - all that has been done is some rather tedious clerical work. Do I find the article "indiscriminate"? On balance, probably not. It's certainly more information than most people will ever need, but so is our article on [insert your favorite obscure hobby or interest here :-)]. If anything, I feel the article has been assembled with care and discrimination - though it's a subject that I know little about, I can tell when an article's been thought about carefully by its editors - and it serves a purpose that a simple category would not.
RomanSpa (
talk) 15:57, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
- Nuke from orbit: From the 2010 AfD:
This is a terrible article. It's a really terrible article. Since its inception, the article has suffered from original research problems because some stories cannot be given a definitive dating (that fact is notable in itself!), and we attempt to definitively date them anyway. The references aren't really references either; they're footnotes containing a lot of equivocating and uncertainty and general editorial statements that we prohibit for a very good reason. Worse, the article actually contradicts reliable sources, and that's a conscious decision done between 2007 and today, because I remember citing the 63-89 stories to reliable sources. I also do not think any amount of cleanup would solve the inherent synthesis and OR problems in this article. This article would be better on a project that allows original research, but not on Wikipedia.
- Yes,
don't demolish the house, but also
don't keep buttressing it when the mortar disintegrated after five days (
mostly because the "mortar" was a mixture of Angel Delight and super glue).
Sceptre (
talk) 15:48, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
- Thank you for bringing the previous AfD to our attention (and there was also Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chronology of the Doctor Who universe (2nd nomination) which concluded "no consensus"). That first AfD concludes, "Let’s be clear that as it currently stands the article does violate our policies, and as such it must be improved. But it seems appropriate to give the article creators time to source the article, and if the article is not satisfactorily sourced within, say, six months, that the matter can be brought again to AfD, with reference to the conclusion of this AfD." Over 4 years later and the problems identified in that AfD ("the article violates WP:PRIMARY [...] The bulk of the information has been put together not from reliable sources, but from direct observation of the episodes, and speculation is part of that observation.") largely remain. (Wikipedia policy has evolved over time and I also think the leniency explicitly shown in that first AfD isn't seen today. Maybe that's a bad thing, maybe it's a good thing.) Bondegezou ( talk) 17:01, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
- The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
- The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
The result was Delete. Randykitty ( talk) 16:16, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
- List of Doctor Who serials by setting ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log · Stats)
- (Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)
as per discussion Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Doctor_Who#Proposed move of List of Doctor Who serials by setting. it is primarily in-universe and original research. => Spudgfsh ( Text Me!) 14:08, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
- Comment - I believe that this article fails to fall inside the scope of Wikipedia (WP:Not) - chiefly too in-universe. While there are valid ways the settings and time periods depicted in the broadcast Doctor Who episodes may be approached such as prose text on the way the settings may have been chosen (Bob Holmes doing a medieval story at Terrance Dicks request), presented and how they were produced, I do not believe there are Reliable Sources outside fan continuity efforts that treat it in this way. And that - since the mixture of settings and time periods is an accretion of efforts of many individuals down the years - making such an organized list is a mixture of OR and SYNTH. The current list tries to reference facts not stated on-screen by making the links between known history and similar events presented in the fictional setting. GraemeLeggett ( talk) 14:18, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
- Delete - Article can only be achieved through WP:SYNTHESIS and WP:OR. 41.135.172.4 ( talk) 15:19, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
- Delete. This list is so bad that it deserves somebody to go back in time and prevent it from ever existing in the first place. — Scott • talk 23:36, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
- Note: This debate has been included in the list of United Kingdom-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k ( talk) 01:06, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
- Note: This debate has been included in the list of Television-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k ( talk) 01:06, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
- Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science fiction-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k ( talk) 01:06, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
- Note: This debate has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k ( talk) 01:07, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
- Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k ( talk) 01:07, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
- Strong delete There has been much effort put into this page and I want to acknowledge that and I hope its contents can be taken to an appropriate fan wiki. However, I agree with the above comments: I cannot see how this article has any place on Wikipedia given its in-universe perspective, its original research and its synthesis. Indeed, there simply isn't any way for this article to meet basic Wikipedia criteria of WP:RS and WP:V unless it wholesale copies material from external sources like Parkin's Ahistory (which would then be a massive copyright violation!). Bondegezou ( talk) 02:05, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
- 'Delete A great addition to a Wikia, but it's just inappropriate here doktorb words deeds 05:21, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
- Delete - ridiculously confusing, and can't really see the purpose it - other than for fans to spot continuity errors (eg "hey x is set before y, so why does x mention y?") 94.195.107.134 ( talk) 13:36, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
- Delete and offer to Tardis Data Core for transwiki. I already suggested this in the discussion at Wikiproject Doctor Who. G S Palmer ( talk) 18:42, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
- Keep. Whilst I understand the reasoning of the other participants in this discussion, I suspect that it is flawed. I agree with the remarks that as it stands this article is too "in universe" I believe it might be re-cast in a more satisfactory manner. I do not, however, find the article to be original research. If our article on
A Tale of Two Cities says that the story is partly set in 1775 this is not original research, but merely applies a date mentioned in the text, or uses a date looked up from actual historical events described in the text. I thus do not find a breach of
WP:OR. Further, I do not find that there is a breach of
WP:SYNTHESIS, because there doesn't seem to be any actual attempt to advance a "particular position": the information is presented as neutrally as possible given the constraints of chronological order. As for
verifiability, I don't see an overall problem. There may be problems with particular items in this article, but generally if an episode of the show says or clearly demonstrates that it is set in year X then this should be taken at face value, just as we take at face value that the events of
'68 are set in 1968. We don't require a third party to assert this for us. Similarly, it seems reasonable to take the view that, unless there is an
unreliable narrator, the text itself is a reliable source for dating itself. Although there are certainly weaknesses with this article I don't find the current case against it to be strong enough.
RomanSpa (
talk) 12:00, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
- The first entry is an example of Synthesis (definition: [combining "material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources") - Castrovalva ("Event One") c. 13.75 billion BCE with reference to the BBC website guide for the story. The reference does not give a date nor does [a probably fallible] transcript of the episode. An editor has taken the story's statement about heading towards "the big bang" and a scientific prediction of the date and joined them together to create that line. GraemeLeggett ( talk) 13:32, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
- Indeed, a quick glance suggests that a majority of entries involve some degree of synthesis. There are some entries were there is a clear unambiguous dating given, but then I would refer to
WP:NOT/
WP:DISCRIMINATE/
WP:NOTDIR. Why should we have an article with such a list?
Bondegezou (
talk) 14:35, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
- As I've already indicated, there are certainly problems with individual items in this article, but this is not a reason to delete the whole article. By all means, if you think this article could be improved by deleting (for example) the "Castrovalva" item then please do so. The key point about
WP:SYNTHESIS, it seems to me, is not just that material from more than one source must be combined, but that this must be done in such a way as to "reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources". It seems to me that this isn't happening here - all that has been done is some rather tedious clerical work. Do I find the article "indiscriminate"? On balance, probably not. It's certainly more information than most people will ever need, but so is our article on [insert your favorite obscure hobby or interest here :-)]. If anything, I feel the article has been assembled with care and discrimination - though it's a subject that I know little about, I can tell when an article's been thought about carefully by its editors - and it serves a purpose that a simple category would not.
RomanSpa (
talk) 15:57, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
- comment The inherent problem though, is that too many stories are deliberately vague about dating, and there are several contradictory statements. The entire UNIT era for example is a mess of contradictory things (40 years after the 1920s in one, after the cold war in another). Then there's the RTD era where stories can only be sorted in relation to each other - and once you try and shift in Sarah Jane adventures, it's impossible to get them all to work. You just cannot come up wit ha consistent thing, because one simply does not exist. 149.254.218.126 ( talk) 09:19, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
- As I've already indicated, there are certainly problems with individual items in this article, but this is not a reason to delete the whole article. By all means, if you think this article could be improved by deleting (for example) the "Castrovalva" item then please do so. The key point about
WP:SYNTHESIS, it seems to me, is not just that material from more than one source must be combined, but that this must be done in such a way as to "reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources". It seems to me that this isn't happening here - all that has been done is some rather tedious clerical work. Do I find the article "indiscriminate"? On balance, probably not. It's certainly more information than most people will ever need, but so is our article on [insert your favorite obscure hobby or interest here :-)]. If anything, I feel the article has been assembled with care and discrimination - though it's a subject that I know little about, I can tell when an article's been thought about carefully by its editors - and it serves a purpose that a simple category would not.
RomanSpa (
talk) 15:57, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
- Nuke from orbit: From the 2010 AfD:
This is a terrible article. It's a really terrible article. Since its inception, the article has suffered from original research problems because some stories cannot be given a definitive dating (that fact is notable in itself!), and we attempt to definitively date them anyway. The references aren't really references either; they're footnotes containing a lot of equivocating and uncertainty and general editorial statements that we prohibit for a very good reason. Worse, the article actually contradicts reliable sources, and that's a conscious decision done between 2007 and today, because I remember citing the 63-89 stories to reliable sources. I also do not think any amount of cleanup would solve the inherent synthesis and OR problems in this article. This article would be better on a project that allows original research, but not on Wikipedia.
- Yes,
don't demolish the house, but also
don't keep buttressing it when the mortar disintegrated after five days (
mostly because the "mortar" was a mixture of Angel Delight and super glue).
Sceptre (
talk) 15:48, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
- Thank you for bringing the previous AfD to our attention (and there was also Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chronology of the Doctor Who universe (2nd nomination) which concluded "no consensus"). That first AfD concludes, "Let’s be clear that as it currently stands the article does violate our policies, and as such it must be improved. But it seems appropriate to give the article creators time to source the article, and if the article is not satisfactorily sourced within, say, six months, that the matter can be brought again to AfD, with reference to the conclusion of this AfD." Over 4 years later and the problems identified in that AfD ("the article violates WP:PRIMARY [...] The bulk of the information has been put together not from reliable sources, but from direct observation of the episodes, and speculation is part of that observation.") largely remain. (Wikipedia policy has evolved over time and I also think the leniency explicitly shown in that first AfD isn't seen today. Maybe that's a bad thing, maybe it's a good thing.) Bondegezou ( talk) 17:01, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
- The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.