Board Thread:Administrative/@comment-61022-20150818130902/@comment-61022-20150824121837

GrnMarvl14 wrote: So, assuming you mean for 1b to continue post-Secret Wars (if not, tell me I'm wrong and ignore this), what about massive character changes, i.e. Falcon becoming Captain America? Things like that that are actively being done by editorial (and are clearly not meant as some sort of quick gotcha moment) should really be done in a timely manner. I'm all for most updates waiting until an arc resolves, but when a marquee character undergoes a significant change and has a new status quo...

Well what I would like to curb is people updating a profile for a character each week a new comic comes out. I just think back to how much of a pain in the butt Spider-Verse was because people were updating pages without waiting for the story to reconcile itself. They were creating pages without doing the proper research. And for what? A lot of frustration for an even that only lasted a few months.

I was speaking primarily of the character history. Stats, sure those should be current. So should the image of the character. But I think we need to put a stop to the week-to-week edits of a characters profile while an arc is still active.

While we can mention that Falcon becomes the new Captain America, we shouldn't be transcribing the events that led to this change in title until the arc is finished so it is a complete recounting. What was it? Four to six months?

Perhaps three months is long, but I would certainly argue that we curb weekly edits of a character in favor of waiting for an arc to be complete.

...we need to present that when it happens to, as has been said, stay competitive.

Is there competition? I don't think there is much out there. You go to Comicvine and they're allowing people to do weekly updates and it looks like !@#$, and they're not as detail orientated, or focused on one area of expertise.

The official Marvel Wiki hasn't seen regular updates happen in a very long time, we've left them in the dust years ago.

The Appendix? They're masters of the obscure, also they wait a loooong time before updating characters, if said characters are in their purview.

Wikipedia? Again, same reasoning as Comicvine. But on top of that, when certain pages are under the radar, they're also very strict about adding incomplete information. The only reason why a comparable page on Wikipedia isn't peer reviewed is because of lack of resources to focus on things that (from the perspective of Wikipedia as a whole) are trivial to other more important information.

Or are we talking about the handful of fan pages that are focused on a specific character or team? Most of those are going the way of the Dodo, and a lot of them don't keep quite as updated as you'd think.

For an example: Tony Stark finding out his parents aren't his parents would fall under an arc reveal, but him adopting a new set of armor (which may seem a simpler thing, plot-wise) should be an immediate update.

These are all things that I would agree would need to be updated right away in the stats section. But, until an arc is complete I don't think people should be updating the character's page until its all done.

Using your example: The Secret Origin of Tony Stark. Go back and try to look at that story as though it was brand new. Now, imagine, you read the first issue then add that information to the page. Just the first issue of that arc.

Now wait a week. Then add information from the following issue. And so on.

That story arc was not linear and so some facts were not presented until key moments of the story.

Because of the non-linear nature of the story, someone could have been adding bits and pieces here and there, and things are going to fall on the wayside.

Case in point, compare the main and expanded history sections of the character. The section regarding it in the expanded history page was done when the arc was over and is complete, concise, and accurate, has an adequate number of references. It tells a complete story. Versus the main page, which is inadequate and has all sorts of things jammed in there. Look at the edit history on that. Updates where almost daily, and there was a lot of revisions, roll backs, constant adding and removing of spoilers, and dickering back and forth while the arc was still in progress.

The amount of energy we're wasting correcting things is astounding. Waiting until an arc is over makes more sense because it allows us hesitation to at least wait until the current story is finished.

GrnMarvl14 wrote: And, again, there's the issue of major new characters (female Thor, Red Hulk) being introduced with no clear identity, but it being said we know who they are.

I don't think that this is really a valid argument so much anymore. The excessively long reveal to the identity of the Red Hulk was a one time thing. Female Thor's identity was revealed in a much shorter period of time comparably. Marvel's pulling this trick out of their hat once every what? Three to five years?

I would agree to creating pages for these characters. But sticking to adding things to an arc. Using the Red Hulk as an example, there were four or five different story arcs involving him until his identity was revealed.

This going to adhere to the old policy, or are we going to hold off on new pages? I just don't want to see us falling behind because we're too careful.

It's not about being "too careful" in my mind. It's being accurate. Doing the job once and doing it right. Which, with very few exceptions, most people who are updating a character page week after week are usually the worst at it. It's impulsive, and not well researched or written properly. It negates our spoilers policy, and as admins we spend valuable time fixing these mistakes constantly. Or worse, we get someone who blows it all out of proportion and there is an edit war, which again wastes our time and energy.

As for falling behind. We are behind in a lot of places, and they continue to be left behind. There are tons of gaps in our information.

I would argue that people don't come here for more information on the stuff they can still get on the racks. They come here to get information about older stories. There are literally thousands of places they can go and read summaries about what's currently going on in "hype-y" kind of way.