I've further worked on the Clan of the Cats entry in the wiki as a way to refine what should be in a "model" entry for a webcomic.
Is it too long? Too many subheadings? Or does it seem okay. I do think completeness is a good goal but I do want the model entry to present the info in a way that is accessible and useful to the casual reader.
Also note that whenever possible we should include awards and nominations in the entry under OTHER - I've included CotCs WCCA nominations.
Any comments? Any other ideas?Â
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I will just point my
I will just point my opinions and suggestions.Â
I don't like quote. They can be very subjective as to which is memorable to readers. Delete it.
Review should be moved to a new section called reference as a subsection since review can be useful references to verify the article.Â
I could delete banners and buttons section too since I think they are too promotional. Â
Reviews Are Not References
Reviews should stay in their own section because people going to Comixpedia.org should have a way to find out if the webcomic has been given a review.
If they are used as a reference for the article generally put them in as a referenece too but it's a different purpose. (I'm having a hard time thinking of when a review would make a good reference in any event but that's how I would handle it)
I take your point about the banners/buttons, but again readers of the wiki may want to grab that and help promote the webcomic after reading their entry. That's a good thing for creators and I think would make them more inclined to support this project.
Also - does anyone have any ideas for additional/extra content/organization etc beyond just commenting on what I've come up with? It's not necessary but I just want to put that out there again...
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Xaviar XerexesÂ
I am a Modern Major Generality.
Missing the Point
Niffy and Tster -this is an effort to work out a model entry for the Comixpedia.org Encyclopedia so some of your comments miss the point completely. We're trying to work out what is a preferred length, etc as a model for everyone to shoot for. I wouldn't expect to put in placeholder subsections for all entries unless there was stuff to put there. So given that, Nif think about the entry assuming it's complete and if you have input on whether that's too much or not or what let us know.Â
T - agreed that it's not going to be for every entry - but the point is that we want a template to direct everyone to as the preferred style of entry for Comixpedia.org - note we have added some webcomic specific items to the top infobox as well as organizing the article itself. If many entries are much shorter than this but follow the same organization the wiki will still be much improved.
Also - future plans for a specific article may go on the talk page but plans for the entire wiki go here in this Comixpedia.com forum. Which again is what this thread is about.
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Xaviar XerexesÂ
I am a Modern Major Generality.
Complexity, not size, is the problem.
As I've mentioned to you before, Xerexes, the more difficult you make it to enter Wiki entries the more exclusive and restrictive you become.
Complex entries like you have for CotC are fine if there is an army of Wiki-smart people willing to write the entry for the creator. But a small comic creator like me, who barely knows wiki-speak, cannot hope to meet your standards. You're setting the bar so high that only the biggest name comics will get acceptable entries, because they're the only ones that will get volunteers to work on them.
In your search for quality, please don't make your wiki an exclusive clique.
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Let Me Try Explaining Myself One More Time
I don't recall what you've "mentioned to me before" so I can only address this comment.
Let me try it this way - What is easier - a blank page for you someone to fill in anyway they want, thereby leaving the wiki full of entries that look nothing like each other or a standard template which we encourage people to follow as much as possible. The latter is going to be the answer for most people and is actually the answer choosen by Wikipedia - I'm just trying to tailor our template to webcomics more specifically.
Sorry if that sounds argumentative but your comment is complaining about a strawman that doesn't exist. If you or anyone looks at the CoTC entry and say "all I want to put in is an overview of the comic" than that's the only section you fill in - you don't have to do sections for characters, plot, etc - other may come in later to flesh your entry out or maybe it never is more then it starts off as.
If you do want to put in more info though it makes sense to try and do in a consistent way - plot in a plot section, characters in a character section. What if an entry was just one long undivided ramble of character/plot/merchandize/books/author bio info? You'd agree that's not a good entry, right? - someone would eventually want to clean that up -my hope is that they'd use the model entry as a guide for that. Not as a threshold for throwing the messy entry out but as a guide for cleaning it up and organizing it a bit. (also there's nothing harder wiki-wise about entering the information in the same format as the model entry - frankly if wiki-code is hard for you just copy and paste the CotC entry into a new one for yourself and work from there)
I don't know how else to explain this. I don't want to argue with people who care enough to discuss this with me (to the contrary I'm glad people care enough about the wiki to help improve it!) but I'm frustrated by responding to comments that for whatever reason don't understand my post or comments and also by the fact that every comment is a negative criticism of something I've put forward as opposed to some discussion of alternative ideas or constructive tweaking of my existing ideas.
How's this for restating my point:
The CotC entry is a model for how to organize a webcomic entry and a guide to what kinds of information an entry should have. It would not be a requirement though for either its structure or the information. You could put in less information or different information and you could put it in any format you wanted but editors working on the wiki would eventually (eventually meaning at some point if someone gets to it!) work to edit the entry to follow the model (although to answer another comment on this thread - I agree that we are going for completeness and I don't want the model entry to be the grounds for deleting information that is different than what's in it).
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Xaviar Xerexes
I am a Modern Major Generality.
xerexes wrote:I don't recall
Yeah, I know that I'm forgettable. :)
I understand what you're saying and I agree with much of it. But let me ask you which is better -- a Wiki that has entries representing a large subset of comics on the web, or a Wiki with just a few entries from those creators who take the time and effort to learn arbitrary and arcane rules -- or worse, just those creators whose comics are so popular that your staff takes it upon themselves to write entries for them.
(As a semi-related aside, is the Library broken? I wanted to give another try at adding myself as a Creator, but can't. Or is that another exclusive clique?)
All I'm saying is that the more conformity you enforce, the less participation there will be.
But I'm bowing out of this discussion for other reasons that I think you're aware of. Just consider me the voice of the little guy. :)
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Didn't mean to be snarky - I
Didn't mean to be snarky - I thought maybe you were referring to comments on this thread and I had completely forgotten about you and the library snafus. Sorry :)
I don't think we are all that far apart. The wiki however is the place for collective community work on webcomic info - the creators are a part of that but it has to rely on much more than that for it to work longterm. It is definitely not exclusive though -- nobody is going to be turned away from putting in an entry to it - no matter what format. And we're sticking with the no need for notoriety (or whatever term Wikipedia is using to justify deletions) policy so that it stays inclusive of all webcomic info.
The guidelines we're working on though would be there as a model for webcomic entries. I don't mean for them to be anything more than that - a model. No one should delete an entry b/c it doesn't follow the model. Someone may edit it later to follow the model but it's always going to be better to have an entry at all.
On the library - I'm not maintaining it right now. The first version of the library was an effort to protect some creator voice but still impose editing. Your comments back then definitely highlighted some of the flaws in that first version. (that's part of why there's no new adds to it right now) I've been thinking of ideas for how to revive the library here at Comixpedia.com and do it in a way that takes any editing out of it. I'm leaning toward just letting every creator have a post to promote/describe their webcomic however they want here at Comixpedia. I just have to find (or write/modify) the right code for it.Â
Xaviar XerexesÂ
Mad Bad and Dangerous to Gnaw.
Nope, not seeing a point.
I guess I am missing the point; I don't see article length as an issue. If the article gets too big, split out the biggest section into its own sub-article and leave a small summary in its place. And honest-to-goodness content is going to be what determines the length of the article. If the plot summary was fully-fleshed out it would probably be split off; it's half the table of contents and therefore probably half the article, too. There'd probably be a page for minor characters, too (where there is none on the main article currently).
Quotes sections are bound to attract all sorts, and in my experience tend to end up as a copy of OhNoRobot, in the worst way possible. Check out Wikiquotes on Megatokyo: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Megatokyo
Why?
Why are you assuming we would want to split off all of those types of pages? What kind of guidelines would we have to set up for that?
This isn't about whether any specific entry is long or short - of course there will be variety based on the quality and completeness of the entry.Â
But after watching Comixpedia.org for awhile now it's more clear to me that webcomic-specific decisions need to be made about it. In this case we need to set out a model entry - especially for creators - to look at so that more of the entries contain what is essential information about each webcomic and less fluff or other material that is not at the core of what would make Comixpedia.org a really valuable resource.
I can see your point about quotes possibly being misued although how does OhNoRobot give me the best quotes from any webcomic? I was thinking more about a few quotes not a whole page of them (given that you cited wikiquote.org where presumably there's going to be a lot more leeway to include a LOT of quotes).
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Xaviar XerexesÂ
I am a Modern Major Generality.
Why I think the way I do...
I was kind of under the impression that we weren't going to be the sort that turned away good info. As such there's a LOT of info that can be and will be written about various webcomics. A single article is not generally enough to hold the information.
Unless you want us to start merging the 30+ listed Megatokyo characters back into the main article? The result would be an awful mess.
Just to see the size down
I'm with nifboy. Obsessive
I'm with nifboy. Obsessive fans may present the complete picture for Megatokyo and a few others, but don't exhaust your volunteer base by expecting the same for other webcomics.
Hmm.
I guess it depends entirely upon whether you see the entry as something that is skeletal, full of obvious holes, omissions, etc, or something that should be *immediately* useful, regardless of the quantity of content that's there in the first place. Your entry is very obviously the first philosophy, a giant "Under Construction, please help out" sign. Its Wikipedia entry is much closer to the latter, something that is useful and presentable even if there isn't a lot there.
To me, organization is directly tied to content; I don't make a section unless there's a few paragraphs to fill it. If there's some information that's in its own little stub section that I can't expand at the moment, I prefer to merge it into some other section until there's enough to justify splitting it back out into its own section.
More generally, future plans for articles typically go on the talk page, not the article itself.