Board Thread:Administrative/@comment-61022-20161213202224/@comment-61022-20161215173006

^^ Exactly as Annabelle explained it.

To further the point on the elimination or reduction on the use of parenthesis when citing character appearances.

I honestly think that it's a redundancy. It certainly requires a lot of extra typing that is unnecessary when someone on the page just needs to click on the link or (at the very least) hover the mouse over the link.

The reason I propose removing the parenthesis is because, depending on the tags used, it cramps everything up against the Info Bar. Example:

take up much more space than

This also creates other cramping and formatting issues when you try to follow the same formatting when placing this data into an Info Box. So my suggestion on the matter has a number of benefits:


 * Less redundant typing
 * More agreeable with formatting
 * It encourages curious readers to click on other links to the site.

Also I want to reiterate that when we started doing that, it was because we were following what the handbooks do. Which, again, are a print medium. They don't have the benefit of the text being a link. So emphasising which version of a character in parenthesis is being spoken of is a necessity in a printed medium, whereas an online source (such as ours) does not require such.

I'd also like to point out that this is the only section of the site where people feel that the Codename (Real Name) is a necessity. It's certainly not universally applied across the board anytime we link to a character (Issue summary, Info Box, Character Bio etc.) I feel the reason why it's not adopted universally is because we know that, intuitively, if someone wants more clarification on what version of a character we're talking about, the person reading it will click on the link.

Also it creates ambiguity. Do you put in the characters birth name? Married name? Legally changed name? What happens when that changes?

I'll give you an example:

The Invisible Woman.

Before she was married she was Susan Storm. When she was married she has consistently gone by Susan Richards. For over 20 years she was referred to as the Invisible Girl until she changed it to the Invisible Woman. She has been in countless stories that are set in earlier points in her career (Before the Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four: The World's Greatest Comics Magazine, Spider-Man/Fantastic Four etc. etc.) yet, despite the clear delineation of these name changes I've seen people use (a) The wrong Codename and (b) the wrong name.

I've seen people list her as (Sue Storm) (Sue Richards) (Susan Storm) (Susan Richards) (Suzie Storm) (Suzie Richards) (Susan "Sue" Storm) (Susan "Sue" Richards) (Susan Storm-Richards) etc. etc. etc.

What I am getting at is there is no consistency, people putting quotations of shorter versions of first names (another redundancy).

Instead of battling with frequent inconsistency, we should eliminate the possibility for inconsistency as much as possible. What ends up in those parenthesis is a matter of preference for whoever is typing them.

If we're going to keep things the way they are, then it's going to have to be an all or nothing. There are too many variables. I'll give you another:

The Wizard.

I subscribe to the fact that he should be identified as Bentley Wittman, so based on the current policy he would be listed as The Wizard (Bentley Wittman)... but what about the people who insist that we should identify with the fact that he legally changed his name to "The Wizard" (even though it was only mentioned once in, in passing, and never mentioned again) then we have to take an all or nothing position. So are we listing him as The Wizard (The Wizard)?

This is just going to open floodgates for more discussion on naming conventions. Which is not even the intention of a Comic Book Summary. At most it's listing who appeared.

So in short, I think we need to pull the naming convention issues out of a comic book summary.

Here's another reason:

When something big happens that changes the way we list things on the comic book summaries, it exponentially increases the amount of pages we need to fix to match what is known.

For example, a long standing character whose full name is unknown is Rogue. To date there are some 940 appearances of that character. Most of those pages probably have her listed as Rogue (Anna Marie). What if tomorrow it's revealed that her name was actually Bethany Smith? That's at least 941 pages that need to be fixed. One character profile and all of those comic summaries.

To put this into a real world situation. Magneto.

It's been almost 9 years since his real name was identified as Max Eisenhardt. Before that he was identified as Erik Lehnshire since the mid 90s. Before that, simply Magnus. He's appeared in over 800 comics.

Regardless on how thorough a Bot is, it's not perfect and there is still a need for human oversight. Human oversight requires vigilance and someone constantly keeping up with things and checking and making the necessary corrections. And, frankly, my observation is that unless it's something that has come out in the last month, most people aren't motivated to go back and make those corrections.

Case in point, my Magneto example, I've looked through about 50 or so comic summaries and there is no consistency. He's listed as:


 * Magneto
 * Magneto (Magnus)
 * Magneto (Erik Lehnshire)
 * Magneto (Max Eisenhardt)

Technically speaking based on the current policy he should be listed as Magneto (Max Eisenhardt). Yet for 9 years nary a person nor bot has gone through and made the necessary corrections.

Impact:

The impact is pretty straight forward: Consider someone who knows nothing about Magneto. (Suspend your disbelief if need be) they see a comic summary with the wrong name in the parenthesis they will:


 * Incorrectly think the character's real name is the name in parenthesis.
 * Start editing pages to place the incorrect name in parenthesis.

So here are some more reasons why I am suggesting this move:


 * Less discussion and debate on how names in parenthesis need to be named (This is a subjective argument anyway)
 * Returns the focus of these sorts of problems to the Character page because that's where they belong.
 * Less ambiguity.
 * Less need to go back and make corrections.
 * Creates less confusion for newcomers who are either trying to learn about a character, and/or interested in editing.

So with all of this logic out on the table, can anyone please tell me why my suggestion is not a good one? And please, please, please, please, give me something a little more substantial than "I prefer it this way" or "this is the way we always done it".

I get personal preference. "we always done it" is a straw man because I've cited countless times where it is inconsistent. I would also point out the lack of effort on the part of lots of people to make things consistent. I also understand that a lot of you say that there are outside reasons that prevent you from devoting the time to do it.

That's also another reason why I am suggesting this change: It creates less work for all of us and we are not having these outlying issues that constantly need correcting.

So please, give me something a little more substantial and constructive as to why we should keep the parenthesis usage the same.

Because frankly, I don't see any other reason other than a resistance to change. A resistance, I must point out, that seems counter productive because anytime there is a massive change that creates more work for us.

So please, enlighten me on the benefits of keeping it the way it is.