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Rob Balder

Updates On Entries in the Ill-Fated Webcomic Directory Project?

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on July 24, 2007 - 14:31

I built a "library" of webcomics and creators back in the fall of 2005 which I put into beta before realizing it was too much editorial work to deal with and the same information could be better provided through the community edited webcomic wiki - COMIXPEDIA.

Nevertheless looking back on the assortment of names collected (some from me, some sent in from you) I wonder if anyone has any significant updates on these creators 18 months later. Maybe we should interview some of them?

Rob Balder

Cult of the Amateur?

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on June 29, 2007 - 10:47

An interesting article in the NY Times talking about a new book by Andrsew Keen called The Cult of the Amateur. It sounds like the book covers a lot of territory but one point of interest to webcomics was the notion that free content is killing content:

"What you may not realize is that what is free is actually costing us a fortune,” Mr. Keen writes. “The new winners — Google, YouTube, MySpace, Craigslist, and the hundreds of start-ups hungry for a piece of the Web 2.0 pie — are unlikely to fill the shoes of the industries they are helping to undermine, in terms of products produced, jobs created, revenue generated or benefits conferred. By stealing away our eyeballs, the blogs and wikis are decimating the publishing, music and news-gathering industries that created the original content those Web sites ‘aggregate.’ Our culture is essentially cannibalizing its young, destroying the very sources of the content they crave."

New Awesome Webcomics Rollcall!

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on May 25, 2007 - 13:37

There's some good older thread on new or underrated webcomics on the site but let's start a new one with recommendations for good stuff that started off this year - 2007.

The first one to mind I would pick is Ali Graham's new webcomic Afterstrife which I'm enjoying and I think is a step up from his first webcomic Housd.

Penguicon 5.0

Penguicon 5.0 at the Troy Hilton in Troy, Michigan is a science fiction/Linux convention. It will feature Comics Guest of Honor R*H*Milholland of Something Positive, plus webcomics creators Rob Balder (PartiallyClips and Erfworld), The Ferrett (Home on the Strange), Megan Gedris (YU+ME), and Eric Millikin (Fetus-X).

News & Views for Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on April 11, 2007 - 10:33

First a quick thanks to current advertisers: The Learn to Draw the Human Figure video course; The Lethal Lady website and blog; the webcomic Life on the Fringe and the DrunkDuck Civil War Webcomic Event. Thanks also to all of our PW sponsors including the very current ones: Freaks N Squeeks; Alma Mater; and Cartridge Comics, Lummox. PW ads appear depending on who is the top bidder right now. You should still check out Cartridge Comics though! :)

Also be sure to check out contributor Joel Fagin's webcomic tutorials site and this month's cover artist Michael Lalonde's very funny webcomic Orneryboy.

HEADLINES

JUSTIFY MY THEIR HYPE

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

Hooked on Erf

Submitted by robert on March 23, 2007 - 13:37

I dig me some Erfworld.

A Philosophical Discussion On Why You Do What You Do

March 18, 2007 - 22:16 | Sebastian Parsons

Sebastian Parsons is back with another outsider's look at webcomics. In an article published by Comixpedia last year (Diversifiwebcomication: Maximize Your Business Potential) Parsons wrote about business strategies for the budding webcomics entrepreneur. In this article, he looks at webcomics within the larger paradigm of Web 2.0 and offers some thoughts on why we webcomic.

Now's Your Chance for More Norse Goodness!

Submitted by Linda Howard Valentine on March 14, 2007 - 13:10

Fans of the romping Norse epic Brat-Halla will be elated to know that its creators are considering increasing their update schedule to twice a week if they receive enough positive reader feedback about the idea.

Trolling, Vandalism and Dragonfiend

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 4, 2007 - 11:45

Wiki Watch

As was noted throughout the week, T Campbell tracked down Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and webcomics-focused Wikipedia editor Dragonfiend for interviews regarding the intersection of webcomic and Wikipedia. Although the interview with Wales is short, the interview with Dragonfiend provides a snapshot of what is probably a pretty typical attitude amongst self-described "wikipedians" towards Wikipedia itself and its role and mission.

One thing that popped out at me, however, was Dragonfiend's reference to a short-lived (now deleted) Comixpedia.org article about which Dragonfiend said:

To give a webcomics-related example, if I'm trying to research webcomics over on a wiki with much more indiscrimnate content policies, like comixpedia.org, I'll find articles like this one on the webcomic [now deleted entry] . Without requiring this topic to be noted by several independent reputable sources, we won't know whether this webcomic is of any importance, or just something that somebody made up one day and posted on the internet.

Here's the thing though - within a minute of looking at that entry I knew it was an example of wiki-vandalism. The supposed external link didn't work. Google.com had no record of the URLs, title, creator or anything about the supposed comic. Within a few more minutes I knew that the user account (unlike Wikipedia, Comixpedia.org does restrict editing to those who sign up for user accounts) had been used solely to create a couple of obnoxious and completely made-up entries. Within a few more minutes after that though (all through the magic of google.com) I knew that this Comixpedia user id was the same as a user id at Wikipedia banned for creating the same kind of entries that the user id created at Comixpedia.org. (Even some of the entries and terms in the entries between Comixpedia.org and Wikipedia were the same!)

What's that prove? Well the first thing it suggests to me is a bit of bad faith on Dragonfiend's part. From picking the most obnoxiously offensive entry s/he could find to picking an entry that was so obviously false it's hard to not to assume Dragonfiend was employing emotional rhetorical tactics simply to make Comixpedia.org (and webcomics generally in her mind) look bad. But since it was so obviously demonstrably false (and one that an active wikipedian like Dragonfiend had additional reason to suspect its status as vandalism) it seems to me that it's an example that backfires on Dragonfiend completely. No one needed "several independent reputable sources," to know this was a made-up entry - it took less then 10 minutes with Google.

I think what her comment proves is that all wikis are susceptible to vandalism - it's one of the weak points in the model. No doubt Wikipedia does not like it when the largest media publications in this country present out of context vandalized entries as examples of Wikipedia "scholarship", and neither does Comixpedia.org.