Board Thread:Administrative/@comment-16461120-20170310003740/@comment-61022-20170310013815

1. I think it should be organized by a hierarchal based on type. I'm sorry, but listing them chronologically looks like !@#$. It's not uniform and it looks sloppy if you have character stacked as chronologically. It's an eyesore. We organize everything in groups anyway (Featured, Antagonists, Supporting Characters etc.) the fact that "Other Characters" doesn't have a similar organization structure doesn't make sense to me.

Also can we take a minute to focus on how we're splitting hairs on if a photo of a character has more significance to someone who is mentioned in a story?

Frankly, if the issue summary is actually written to a level of detail any questions about any of the appearances, their significance, and what they mean in the context of the story is a moot point.

If you disagree with any of the above, I'd like to know how much time you spend writing issue summaries.

2. --- This question is actually not the issue at hand here ---

MY position on this issue is the fact that some FlashOnly's actually have some chronological value while the majority are basically the same as recaps.

My position on this issue is that we should, by default, resort ALL FlashOnly tags to automatically sort into Minor Appearances because there are more FlashOnly appearances that would be considered recap style appearances than actual flashbacks that add to the chronology of a character.

My position on this is as such:

As someone who has edited thousands of summaries and put in the research to make sure all of the information is accurate, I can tell you that you are going to hit more instances where a "FlashOnly" tag has been used in such a way that it is listing a major appearance incorrectly.

That's the whole reason why I said we're creating more work if we keep it as something that lists as a major appearance because there are more instances where that is not correct.

From a research perspective, it is creating more work because people are wasting more time tracking down comics that tell them nothing new. It's also creating more work because we have more tags that need to be fixed.

The amount of "FlashOnly" tags that are actually minor appearances (beacuse the flashbacks are basically recaps) is significantly larger than ones that actually offer continuity.

To clarify:

Changing the code of the template to resort FlashOnly as a minor appearance creates less instances where information is in the wrong category. Making cleaning up any misidentified appearances a lot easier.

I don't see why I am getting so much resistance on this because it's a pretty common sense approach to the problem.

In summation, making FlashOnly place into a minor appearance does the following:

Removes all the incorrect uses of FlashOnly out of the Major Appearances.

This is important because:


 * We just implemented the Recap Tag, that has created a situation where we have 70+ years of comics have FlashOnly tags that are not correct because the flashbacks they signify do NOT add to a characters continuity.


 * These FlashOnly tags put what I call "False Positives" in the Major Appearnce field. If you're researching well known characters like Spider-Man, Captain America, (etc) and you are trying to pull comics based on what is listed in Category:Name/Appearances, you're going to get HUNDREDS if not THOUSANDS of comics that feature flashbacks that are there for recapping a past story, and not adding anything new.


 * We don't have people who are dedicated to putting the time into fixing this incorrectly tagged appearances. If we have it automatically sort into Minor Appearances that would create less "false positives" than what we have now leaving it as it is.