Board Thread:News and Announcements/@comment-61022-20150909141417/@comment-61022-20150910123058

Cjtrules15 wrote: Crazy to see most of the pages be untouchable for 8 months!

Well that's technically untrue, the pages can be edited, there's just a moratorium on Secret Wars related material because we don't know what versions of a character is active in the on going event (there are some exceptions to this naturally, but we're taking an all or nothing approach here) it's better to do it right once, then to get it all wrong and then work on fixing it later.

In the meantime, people can still edit those pages with non-Secret Wars stuff. In fact we encourage that. Many pages for these main characters are missing chunks of relevant information or references to what comics those events took place in.

If anyone reading the above is wondering "what can I do now?", I should remind everyone that Marvel has a rich history that is over 75 years old. You should immerse yourself in it. Old plot lines have a habit of coming back, and any franchise that has been long going, it pays to know your stuff. In this day and age where trade paperbacks and digital reprints are so easily to access, I am a little disappointed that people don't take advantage of the day and age we live in.

I've been reading comic books for almost 30 years, and let me tell you when I first started reading back issues required a lot of effort and money. You really had to hunt for older comics, reprints were rare unless it was a mega popular character, and trade paperbacks were somewhat hard to come by. Of course the internet didn't exist back then either. You guys today have so many resources to get those comics. You can purchase them online, trades are so easily available, there are literally thousands of back issues that comic book shop owners will sell you at rock bottom prices -- just to clear up space --, you can borrow them from the library. And that's just the tip of the ice berg.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is, if you've spent every month since May waiting for these pages to open up again (and that's how you plan on spending time until December 9) then you're really wasting a golden opportunity to really contribute here.

As I said, there are many gaps in information of popular characters, and there are so many ancillary or minor characters who have no information in their profiles at all. There are comic summaries that are blank. There are so many more things out there.

I want to stress that a valued contributor to this site isn't going to be someone who adds what's new and current, anyone can do that, it's not a challenge. The person who is going to be valued and earn the respect of others is that one who goes the extra mile adding information that has been lacking on this site since it's inception.

People will go on ad naseum about how we have to keep things current and up to date as possible. Which sure, that's how you're going to get people to come back again and again, but we should never do it at the expense of a lack of representation over what has come before. A forgotten history is the largest disservice to those seeking knowledge.