Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26066818-20151011135048/@comment-61022-20151108154548

I disagree. The Handbooks always make a point to specify if it's really a particular president. If you look at any mentions of past presidents referenced in the Handbooks they are always generalize as "President of the United States" instead of being directly named. The only time a President is named in the handbooks is if the story doesn't happen in the modern age (Most commonly this is stories set during World War II).

As such we need to be differentiating between what are topical references and what are in-continuity references. It avoids confuses, clarifies the Sliding Timescale and it also eliminates errors being made because people assume that Marvel Time is happening in real time.

We're not just talking about people either, we're also talking about historical events, landmarks, and other topical references that were true when a story was published that would drastically age the Marvel Universe.

For example, based on how the sliding timescale works, the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 no longer happen in the modern age. Those attacks were featured heavily in Marvel storylines in 2002-2003. But now these are topical references.

I wrote about it in detail here.

As an editorial policy we must not waffle about the Sliding Timescale in any regard because it provides a specific guideline on how we should be handling things.

We should also be doing more to clarify of the Timescale works in respect to comic book summaries, which I have been doing while painstakingly going through and updating issue summaries for Fantastic Four Vol 1. You'll note the extensive "Continuity Notes" section that I've added to the majority of those pages. It clearly explains to readers how certain facts should be interpreted.

This is something we need to be doing so that readers understand things regardless of what page they go to.

It's pretty clear if you read how I quantified it in the glossary.