Board Thread:New on Doctor Who Fanon/@comment-4189499-20140119130637/@comment-188432-20140120194427

Pinguinus wrote: What are the practical limits of the directory? Good question! I would suggest that an official policy on the matter might look something like "No wikis will be eligible to join the network if their range of content is already covered by another wiki." Therefore, TDC, DWA, and DWF are different enough in terms of scope and function to coexist peacefully, while the SJA wiki or a hypothetical doctorwhofanfic.wikia would be rejected. But therein lies the rub, ya see. I once held a discussion at both DWC and tardis over whether we at tardis should just hand off coverage of DW merchandise to DWC. No one responded at DWC and tardis respondents, what few there were, opted strongly in favour of keeping merchandise coverage at tardis. Thus, DWC is in technical conflict with tardis coverage. Similarly, w:c:whospecialfeatures is in conflict with tardis. So it's not really in tardis' interest to join a network that includes DWC or WSF.

Similarly, your goals here at DW Fanon aren't particularly well defined. A casual reader of the site could well think that this is what's called a "vanity wiki" — that is, a wiki set up to serve the particular interests of the principle users of the site.

Where, for a start, is your Project:About page? What does it mean on your front page that you "write collaborative stories on the Doctor Who Universe" when you have templates like this:

Not only is that antithetical to your one, stated, main page goal, it's also not reasonable under the terms of the license under which Wikia operates. Of course anyone can alter anything. So a number of people would take one look at that, think you were crazy, and decide, "Hey, I should really set up a fanfic wiki that abides by Wikia's licensing."

And although you might object to the inclusion of that other site, why would other wikis in this network have a problem? Why would we not want to encourage a more CC-BY-SA-compliant fanfic wiki?

Now I'm not trying to pick on you. I'm just saying that all of us — except for DWA, since no new Answers wikis can be created — have reason to be concerned about the presence of other, similar wikis. The last thing any of us would want would be for this idea to backfire and actually dilute our pool of editors.

But, yanno, we might not understand each other's objections. If tardis objected to DWC would that objection be sustained by DWA? If this theoretical dwfanfic.wikia.com were to be created, and it firmly operated within the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license, would we be able to vote you out for clear noncompliance? What would be the mechanics by which our objections would be handled? Would we need unanimity amongst current members to reject applicants? Would it need to be ⅔ majority? Bare majority? Plurality? What, exactly, would prevent a DW wiki from being included in this network?

Would dormancy be a valid rationale for pulling a wiki? I mean, of course it is, but what level of dormancy is required to pull a wiki? Do we have to wait, as happened at the w:c:entertainment:Doctor Who page, for a wiki to actually be closed before it can be pulled? Or can we say, "Hey, six months have passed without activity, so this thing is gone from the network."

This proposal is so seductive at a very superficial level, but when you just so much as scratch the surface, it kinda falls apart.