Talk:Outpost Gallifrey

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The problem with this article as it stands is that the only source is the website itself... Looking at Wikipedia:Notability (websites), the first suggestion is that "The content itself has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the site itself". Here's one to start us off [1], but think a few more should be found promptly! Tim (meep) 18:07, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

We could probably find some examples of the British press using the OG forums for tidbits on slow news days — it's happened quite a few times now. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 23:04, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
The Mirror's story about Shaun closing the forums in March last year after the Eccleston departure announcement should still be around online somewhere to reference. It'd be a good one as it's actually about the site, rather than simply using it for news. Angmering 06:47, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Good idea. I've added that and an L.A. Times citation, which should suffice for the notability criterion. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 07:03, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Screenshot of site

Wouldn't a screenshot of the site and possibly an infobox relating unto websites be appropriate for this article? DrWho42 12:36, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Done and done :) --Ood 19:24, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Would it not be better to have a picture of the main page rather than the forum? Angmering 22:12, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm prolly bias based on the fact that I frequent message board but seeing all the forums gives me a good idea of what's discussed thereon and that's rather plusgood information to me.
Personally, my problem with the main page idea is that it seems to change alot more whereas this would prolly keep its format in the long-run...
However, main page does seem like a good idea I'd really would rather have the message board image up there to illustrate the fan-group discussion. DrWho42 22:25, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm not anti the forum — I'd be a bit mad to be, being a regular poster there — but it strikes me that a Wikipedia article on a website should show the front page, rather than just one section. I know it does change, but a representative snapshot in time will suffice, I think. We can always update it the next time Shaun does a major design overhaul. Angmering 22:54, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
The screenshot needs updating. It shows a use logged in as "dalek5". This account is now banned from the forum. Obviously I can't make a new screenshot because that would expose my new username. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ood (talk • contribs) 11:33, August 16, 2006
If we're getting an updated screenshot, I'd rather it were an image of the main page. The forum is important for fan discussion, but the article is about the website as a whole, which I think is better represented by the main page. Just my 2¢. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 15:53, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
...and in the Wikipedia spirit of {{sofixit}}, I've made a screenshot of the front page and uploaded it. Y'all can decide if it's an improvement or not. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 03:28, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
Much better! By the way, as a point of interest, how do you make a screenshot of a whole webpage like that? Angmering 06:25, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
I didn't know myself before today. I did a little research, and found a shareware program called SnapWeb for Mac OSX — I assume that similar things exist for Windows and Linux. It seemed a useful enough utility for me to pay the shareware fee. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 06:35, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

On a whim, I've uploaded a new version of the page screenshot, at Image:Outpost Gallifrey2.png. However, I'm not sure whether it should be added or not: the layout hasn't changed significantly, and the new version has a prominent ad for the "Unleashed II" convention at the bottom. (I cropped the Google ads out of the screenshot, but the other ads are integrated into the page layout.) What do other folks think: better? worse? no difference? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 06:15, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] TheM62Manchester's concerns

TheM62Manchester (talk · contribs) has recently put several tags on the page, which have been subsequently removed by other editors (including myself). These included Template:accuracy, Template:advertisement and (most baffling to me) Template:sermon. I've invited M62 to come discuss his or her concerns here. Are there NPOV concerns that we should be addressing? Notable criticism of the site? (I know that updates have been less frequent than they used to be, but is that encyclopedic?) I think that the sourced comments that we've got here are appropriate, and all the info is correct. Is it too hagiographic? (Can you be hagiographic about a website?) I'd like to hear more. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 21:23, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Apologies for those templates: I should have used Wikipedia:Sandbox for them not a live article! --TheM62Manchester 22:25, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
Uh, right. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 22:42, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
OK... that was odd, but I'll assume good faith... —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 23:46, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Site mentions in DWM 377

The latest Doctor Who Magazine mentions Outpost Gallifrey twice. First, in the Gareth Roberts interview, Roberts talks about the fans who track down the Doctor Who crew on location: "These people should be working for MI5, they're wasted on Outpost Gallifrey. To be able to comb that amount of media and make contacts and find this stuff out... they should be hunting Al-Qaeda, not stalking Nick Briggs in a van in the middle of nowhere." Then, on Sorvad's satirical "Space-Time Telegraph" page, there's this joke:

TV'S DR WHO sighed with relief today when it was confirmed that Gallifrey had not in fact been destroyed in the Time War. The confusion arose when he heard that a society comprised of people totally out of touch with the universe, hunched mumbling over screens containing futile debates of no concern to anybody else had been vaporised by the Daleks. This was, in fact, internet forum Outpost Gallifrey.

D'you think either of these are worth mentioning in the article? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 06:03, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

I was toying with the idea of adding the Roberts one myself. Something along the lines of "Gareth Roberts, one of the writers of Doctor Who, complimented the persistence of fans on the website's forum who were able to track down the locations where the series was being shot. "These people should be working for MI5, they're wasted on Outpost Gallifrey," Roberts said in a December 2006 interview with Doctor Who Magazine. "To be able to comb that amount of media and make contacts and find this stuff out... they should be hunting Al-Qaeda, not stalking Nick Briggs in a van in the middle of nowhere."
Oh, and there's actually a third mention, by the way — in Andrew Pixley's review of the year, he refers to CBBC interviewer Lizo being "possessed by the spirit of Outpost Gallifrey" when he started asking RTD about the Rani and so forth in that website interview. Angmering 15:32, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
I just caught that one this morning. The wording you suggest for the Roberts mention is nice, and I'll let you do the hono(u)rs. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 20:34, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Okay, done. :-) Angmering 21:10, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Is OG considered a reliable source for news ?

I ask because of a edit here on Last of the Time Lords saying it wasn't presumably because it is a fan site

I thought it is considered a reliable source for news .Garda40 14:49, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Since I'm now one of the news editors there, I obviously have a conflict of interest, but my feeling is that the News Page is a fairly reliable source for Doctor Who news — obviously not as reliable as Doctor Who Magazine or the BBC itself, but I think that OG's track record is better than that of the British tabloids (which are frequently cited on Wikipedia, in Doctor Who contexts and others, without challenge).
The key is to distinguish the News Page (where news is posted only by a few, selected editors) from the Forum (where anybody can post). The OG Forum can be used as a Wikipedia source only in a few, very limited circumstances (mostly posts by Doctor Who notables such as Steven Moffat and Paul Cornell, whose identities are well-established on the site).
Come to think of it, should this article name the Doctor Who writers, etc., who are established as members of the Forum? From the television series, we have Cornell, Moffat and Gary Russell as regular posters, and then there are folks like Keith Topping and Jonathan Blum who are associated with the novels. I'm trying not to edit the page myself because of the aforementioned COI, so if anyone wants to add these mentions feel free. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 14:46, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Screenshot, revisited

I see that someone has replaced my screenshot from last year (Image:Outpost Gallifrey.png) with a new one (Image:Wwwgallifreyonecomindexphp.jpg). I don't have any problem with the image being replaced/updated, but I notice that the new image has some sort of artifact near the bottom, as if it's been cut-and-pasted and some material has been missed.

I can upload a new image if folks are interested, but I'm trying not to edit the page myself because of the conflict of interest (see above). Would someone else be willing to replace the current image if I upload a new one? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 16:23, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Never mind — the new one didn't jump through all the hoops correctly, and was deleted while I wasn't looking. Someone else was kind enough to return my old one. The offer to update it, if people think that would be useful, still stands. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 22:48, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The first paragraph

I put the revisions I made a couple weeks ago back into the first paragraph because they're accurate. Considering that I'm the editor of the site, I think I know what the site exists as more than anyone... :) -- shaun

Hi Shaun. A few lines explanation on the reverts...
This article is about the entity that was the noteworthy Outpost Gallifrey website. The surviving OG page at the domain name is headlined "Welcome to the former Outpost Gallifrey", and as the Wikipedia article states, it acts as a links page to the succeeding sites (those that continue as standalone separate bodies) and the historical archive.
The article gives a detailed breakdown of the stages of closure the site underwent. I would suggest that the succeeding sites could not be classed as "sub-sites" of a parent that no longer exists as a going concern.
However, as I am personally involved in some aspects of this, and given Wikipedia's rules on (potential) personal bias, I'll leave others to take this one forward. --The Missing Hour (talk) 22:07, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Except we all know that the site is still there. The forum is still there. The news page is still there. The website is not closed. It is now a web portal. You do Wikipedia a disservice by a claim that it is 'defunct' or gone, because it's not. Let's face it: nobody thinks of them as different sites, and I think this is incredibly disingenuous to bandy semantics by calling it so. There is also absolutely nothing wrong with clarifying the situation as it currently stands.