Skip to main content

T Campbell

News & Views for Thursday, Somewhere in April

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on April 12, 2007 - 16:42

So um... taxes? They suck. Let's throw rocks at 'em.

HEADLINES

INTERVIEWS

  • The Daily Crosshatch has an interview with creator Raina Telgemeier.
  • For his podcast, T Campbell interviews Eric Burns and Wednesday White (mp3 link) and they talk about Websnark, blogging & podcasting. As always, Eric is simultaneously humble and well not-humble (it's charming though), Wednesday drops geek-cred terms (did I hear CMS in there? That's content-management-system) and for some odd reason sounds like she's sitting five feet behind Eric in the interview. Surprisingly, T Campbell asks no questions about actual webcomic content though...

REVIEWS

DEAD TREES

Updating the Feed Lists

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 22, 2007 - 10:03

When we switched to Drupal one of the nice things I was able to set up was pulling in the RSS feeds of other sites to Comixpedia. That way we do less "link" blogging here but you can still get a sense of what's going on in webcomicland from the syndicated headlines.

Welcome to the Webcomicdome!

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 20, 2007 - 11:40

Busy news week already - don't forget to check out all of the articles from March's Short Story Issue (and we added some articles to February's Webcomic Collectives Issue this month as well). Next month's issue will cover science fiction themes - if you are interested in writing for the magazine drop me an email (xerexes AT comixpedia DOT com).

INTERVIEWS

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

Bring the Newz!

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 19, 2007 - 10:13

MAGAZINE

HEADLINES

  • Reinder Dijkhuis has an interesting essay on Project Wonderful. My take on Project Wonderful is that it's a wonderful platform for a web-based advertising system but what remains to be seen is whether it turns into an advertising service. A service needs some entity interacting with traditional media buyers (usually advertising agencies) to sell them ad space on the platform. Whether that's PW creator Ryan North who takes that on or some other arrangement, it's a piece of the puzzle necessary to the long-term success of PW. Don't get me wrong though - I'm a big fan of PW right now and I'm optimistic about it.

INTERVIEWS

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

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.

Overcommitted, Scatterbrained Creators

A late Blind Date II entry from Charlie Beck and T Campbell.

News and Whatnot for Friday, February 23, 2007

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on February 23, 2007 - 11:08

BUSINESS

INTERVIEWS

OTHER WIKI(s) WATCH

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

Thank God It's Blind Date II

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on February 22, 2007 - 19:33

We've got two more excellent Blind Date II comics for Friday!

We're heading into the home stretch Blind Date II participants! Email me those finished comics by the end of this Sunday, February 25th! The list of creators still yet to report on their "blind date" after the jump (nudge nudge, know what I mean?):

WCCA Winners?

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on February 18, 2007 - 11:20

Yesterday at MegaCon was the WCCA ceremony. Anyone there want to post on which winners were announced (nothing's up at the WCCA website yet) and other reactions?

I'm listening to the pre-WCCAs MegaCon podcast from the Gigcast now (mp3 link) - I think they were planning on doing a WCCA podcast but it's not up yet.

Early Friday Morning News Wakey Wakey

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on February 16, 2007 - 00:09

WIKIPEDIA WATCH

REVIEWS

INTERVIEWS

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS