Board Thread:Administrative/@comment-24800939-20181112031329/@comment-61022-20181112165545

I'm going to divvy up my comments to make some distinction as the Deadlands, I think, is an entirely different beast that can be handled separately from the rest.

Deadlands
I'm at a loss as to why there needs to be a glossary instead of individual pages. If structured properly, you can create pages for all of these characters.

Each page could have a general opening paragraph. I would write it like this:

"The Deadlands existed on Earth-13264, a world where Earth's superhumans became flesh-eating zombies. A portion of Earth-13264 became a segment of Battleworld following the collapse of the multiverse. Here, it became the dumping ground of Battleworld's undesirables who were typically infected with the virus as well. As such, there are multiple versions of the same individual dwelling in the Deadlands. Due to the fact that it is an untamed wasteland of the undead, many details regarding these individuals and their counterparts are unknown.

To date, there have been (X Number) of sightings of (Character name) in the Deadlands and elsewhere on Battleworld."

Then list all the different appearances of the various versions of that character by the Secret Wars read order.

The General Appendix Generally
I like this better than the current model where these characters are added to city pages.

Frankly, I think there should be a limitation to WHO gets on one of these pages. Honestly, I dislike them to begin with as people waste a lot of time writing one sentence summaries about characters that are anecdotal at best. As far as general audiences go, nobody is going to care about these characters. This is so far into the fringe of the fandom that I think we can count the people who care for such details on a single hand. It's a step above creating pages of all the unnamed minor characters who appear in the thousands. Could you imagine a page filled with entries like "This guy was here at that battle and said this." and "That guy, was there and did that thing that did this." If you can view that as pointless, then you see the point I am getting at.

That said, I can see why some people might want to do that legwork. However, when you take a look at glossary pages in the various Marvel Handbooks and Encyclopedias, there is a standard. Every character who pops up in an appendix has at least a short paragraph of information about them.

I think, in order to continue, there is a need for SOLID criteria aside from "That person has a name".

Looking at your sandbox example, I see the following:
 * All of these characters have a single sentence describing who they are.
 * These individuals aren't explained in much detail, I feel compelled to click on the link to the comic.
 * Multiple characters with the same first name are haphazardly grouped together with no rhyme or reason (Example: Albert. You have one who appears in an X-Men comic from the 60s, a Spider-Man comic from the early 2000s and a Tales of Suspense comic from the 60)

As far as how I would do this, I'd ask myself a number of questions to determine if a profile is worth the time.

1) Is the character unique? Is there something that they do that stands outside of being a generic background person?

2) Do they do more than react to a plot element?

3) Do they appear in more than one panel?

4) Can I write more than one sentence about this person?

I don't think anyone is going to be interested in scrolling through a list of people named Frank who witnessed different superhero battles.

Moreover, if I read a single sentence and have no idea what you're talking about, then it's not a good description.

Example: The first Albert on the list.

"Albert and Barney spotted Kukulcàn's sphere of solar force moving fast across the night sky"

Some questions:

where was Albert when he saw this? What was he doing at the time he witnessed the sphere of solar force? What did he do AFTER he saw the sphere? What's his relation to Barney?

If these details are unimportant or unknown, then I don't think Albert deserves the time and energy of being on an appendix. Moreover, if I read this and have no clue what you're talking about and have to click on the link to the issue summary every time, then it's not a compelling explanation to the character.

Also, when we're talking about the format of the glossary page. Aesthetically, it looks fine. However, I would recommend that characters with the same first name should be listed in order of publication history.

Using Albert as an example again:

The list goes as thus:


 * An Albert appearing in an X-Men comic from 1966
 * An Albert appearing in a Spider-Man Unlimited comic from 2004
 * An Albert appearing in a Tales of Suspense comic from 1960

It should be in the order of publication history:


 * Albert from Tales of Suspense
 * Albert from X-Men
 * Albert from Spider-Man Unlimited

Then there is the question of different universes. I would suggest that each individual reality has their own appendix as necessary to keep some semblance of organization.