WIKIPEDIA TALK:WIKIPROJECT COMICS ARCHIVE 38

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Power ring (weapon)

Once you take out alllllll the in-universe referencing, you're left with close to nil. I for one think all you need is for it to be a brief section or paragraph in the main Green Lantern article. WesleyDodds ( talk) 08:09, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes and no...

First step would be to see if the current article can be compressed. And that may be something to do in a sandbox instead of directly on the article.

In doing that, it needs to be remembered that:

Some of the primary sourcing is being used to support the secondary and tertiary sourcing. Not all of it is going to get pitched.
Not everything in this article is directly related to the Green Lantern article. Yes, a lot of the 1st section (Green Lantern Corps) does, but not the following 2. Those have different articles to which they relate.
If the article is going to be broken up and merged into the 11 or 12 related article, is it going to be done at the expense of the information and the ability to present the topic as a unified whole? And remember, especially with Green Lantern someone is going to point out "Large file, trim it" and likely chuck the "minor paragraph/section" on the ring.

So yes, there is padding that can removed from the Power Ring article, but no, at this point it would be counter productive to merge it away. - J Greb ( talk) 12:33, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Even if power rings are not necessarily exclusive to Green Lanterns themselves, they are primarily associated with the Green Lantern mythos (all the Lantern Corps are are essentially Green Lantern series characters, after all). The only exception is really the Crime Syndicate character Power Ring, but the whole point of him is "evil Green lantern" anyway. I see absolutely no reason or evidence from independent sources as to why there needs to be an article on the concept of DC power rings. WesleyDodds ( talk) 03:18, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Green Lantern is so famous, a Good Article could be made using sources like this (pp. 83-85, 96-98). I'm not going to bother doing it though. It should probably be redirected, maybe with a little merging. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 03:40, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

That's actually one of the few sources available on Green Lantern. As I mentioned elsewhere, it's the same problem with The Flash (I did quite a bit of looking on this one because I was considering work on that character page, and was shocked by how little I found). There's tons of secondary source info on the big three of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, but scholars are generally not interested in any other mainstream DC Universe characters. At most you can scrounge up some creation details, some sales figures, some commentary by later writers and artists, cancellation and relaunch info, and that's it. WesleyDodds ( talk) 05:51, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Do we really care? I can think of one book off the top of my head, The Comic Book Heroes: From the Silver Age to the Present, that goes into great detail on Green Lantern, and it cannot be searched with google books. It has a whole chapter (maybe two) on the Silver Age Green Lantern. I'm sure it discusses the ring a bit in its many pages on GL. I'm sure there are Golden Age books that discuss GL in great detail, as well. If we were trying to fight an AfD, maybe that would matter. I think this is just an editorial decision of how to organize our info. GL needs to be a fat FA, then we can spin off info. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 05:57, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

(ec)

That's a little over simplified... Going through what's there:

Overview - Yes, there is room for compression but not out right elimination. remember that the topic is of note and some explanation of what it is in-story is needed, wherever the material winds up.
"Green Lantern Corps" §1-4 - Most of the material here covers aspects related to Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps, possibly more to the latter. Some of the material also tailored to or needed on the stand alone GLC members articles.
"Kyle Rayner" - This is material specific to Kyle Rayner but not to the GLC as a whole.
"The Corpse" - Relates only to the § of the same name in the GLC article.
"Other power rings" - Again, the information could migrate to multiple articles:
- Green Lantern: The Blackest Night
- Red Lantern Corps and the stand alone RL members
- Sinestro
- Sinestro Corps and it's other stand alone members
- Blue Lantern Corps
- Star Sapphire (comics) and potentially the stand alone articles
- Black Hand (comics)

And that is without looking at characters that have minimal use of the variants (Guy with the yellow, Hal with the yellow and red) or "just got" a ring (Fatality with the Violet)

"Power Ring" - Only directly related to Power Ring and not really relevant to the GLC article.
"Starheart" - Which is material specific to Rayner, Alan Scott and Jade

- J Greb ( talk) 04:14, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

How is the topic notable? Even considering The Science of Superheroes spends three pages talking about Green Lantern, power rings, and power batteries, that doesn't necessarily mean there needs to be a separate article about power rings. we need to establish notability of the subject independent of the source material to justify keeping an article on it. WesleyDodds ( talk) 05:51, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

The whole Green Lantern area is such a rat's maze of poorly written articles that I've tended to look the other way. I would suggest that first we put together a list of existing articles in that area, chop out the in-universe tone, purple prose and see where we can merge content. -- Cameron Scott ( talk) 12:37, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Top-o-the-list: List of Green Lanterns

I've been taking swings at it from time to time, but most of the entries are word-for-word lifts from the GL/Sinestro Corps Secret File or "The Great Book of Oa" website. If/when the copyvios are all gone, it may be a useful spine to fold some of the "minor" GL articles back into. It's taking time since I'm not willing to point blank blank everything. - J Greb ( talk) 02:22, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

What?

I just read the above thread, and it's being suggested that power rings/power batteries are not "worthy" of their own article because of what?

This concept is interesting, and has been written about (in particular on comparisons to the lensmen, among other things).

But that aside, there are several power "implements", which includes staves, rings, batteries, and apparently even the "eye" of the emerald empress, among several other things.

One thing I will say though is that the dab phrase of "weapon" seems rather innapropriate. It's like suggesting that a shovel is a weapon, or that a lantern is a weapon. Or, even more of an analogy, I wouldn't call a Swiss army knife a "weapon". Just because the implement can be used against another indivdual, doesn't mean that it must be used that way. Look at the complex machines that Kilowog used to create with his ring, for just one example.

Anyway, a page outlining the objects, and the concepts, and the history thereof, seems indeed quite notable. - jc37 10:32, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

You may think its notability is obvious, but it's not if you don't care about the Green Lantern mythos. Simply put, the article does not establish the notability of the subject. Instead, the perspective is incredibly fannish. It's a problem lots of comics articles have. Just because it appears in a ton of comics doesn't necessarily mean loads of secondary sources have discussed it, or that it merits a ton of coverage. WesleyDodds ( talk) 10:37, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

And an article on Einstein isn't important if you don't care about him either.

And articles about comics... Ask anyone over the age of 70, and they may say that those were just those funnies that you threw away with the other magazines.

This isn't about what you or I may like, it's about coverage of information in this encyclopedia.

And Green lantern rings (one form of power ring), are objects, but also have microscopic worlds in side them, and even have spoken themselves, to the point of (possibly) acting as a "character" in a story.

That's all in-story detail. We need secondary sources commenting on why that it important. WesleyDodds ( talk) 11:49, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

This isn't just my opinion either. Several experts have discussed and compared these. Adam Kistler and Scott Tipton are just two who immediately spring to mind. (There's also "minor" people in the history of comics like Jerry Bails and Roy Thomas...)

I know who Roy Thomas is, but the others are unfamiliar. What have they said about the subject of power rings? WesleyDodds ( talk) 11:49, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

And I'll disagree with: "Just because it appears in a ton of comics doesn't necessarily mean loads of secondary sources have discussed it, or that it merits a ton of coverage."

I gave The Flash as an example of a "major" comics character who is actually sparsely covered by secondary sources. I did find a few sources for that character while digging, but nothing comparable to the amount for Batman, Watchmen, or even The Punisher. They sure as hell could care less about the Cosmic Treadmill, that much is for sure. In-story important does not necessarily translate to an equal amount of real-world coverage. To give a non-fiction example, both Nevermind and Dookie have sold the same amount of records and have been highly regarded critically, but there's faaaaaar more sources available on the former than the latter, because writers prefer to write about Nirvana. WesleyDodds ( talk) 11:49, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

It's a fallacy. Lots of things appear in publication. Some are what even you might consider notable, and some, not so much. Has little to do with the price of tea in China, as they say.

Provide some. WesleyDodds ( talk) 11:49, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Sounds to me that you only want articles which concern the "topic" of comics, while insisting that nothing which actually appears on the pages be covered. Shrugs. At the very least, that seems somewhat contrary to Wikipedia's goals. (" Specialty cyclopedias...") - jc37 11:08, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

You're missing the point. My point is you have to establish notability and explain why an article is important, no matter what subject. I know Einstein is important; doesn't mean his article should be all trivia or a mere stub, for example. The reason for power rings having their own article is less evident. I can name all five main Green Lanterns at the drop of a hat, not necessarily because they are notable, but because I've read a bunch of comics (they are notable, regardless). Still, no convincing reason has been provided as to why there needs to be a power rings article once you take out all the fancruft. The entire article is in-universe, aside from the first sentence. WesleyDodds ( talk) 11:49, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm fed up with this stupid sourcing argument. Our policies and guidance are vague enough on sourcing that there is no definitive answer. What matters most is writing decent articles that are informative, neutral and cited. Let's get real here, we don;t have half the "divisive" issues you can find anywhere else in this place. We don't do politics, we don't do religion, we don't do science, we don't do anything even halfway contentious. The most explosive issues we have are who created Batman and who owns Superman, and both of those aren't covered too shabbily if you ask me. The rest of what we are talking about is fiction. Now all we need to do is take a moderate approach to what we cover. Not everything, nobody with an eye on building a consensus is arguing we cover every character ever in the history of comics. But by balance, there needs to be an understanding that concepts mentioned in secondary sources can be covered. Not just topics which have had five or six books devoted solely to them. Because, you know what. People reading those books may want to seek further information. And as long as we can summarise what is previously published, accurately and neutrally, as long as we agree, we can give it to them. I'd rather we wrote decent articles that everyone could say, "that's not how I'd do it, but I'm happy to sign off on it", than have nothing at all or rambling, poorly written, unsourced articles that might as well say nothing at all. But that's just me. Contributions to Wikipedia are diminishing. I know why mine are. It's not fun anymore. It's turned into a fight over every little detail. What's the point in that. Hiding T 11:39, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Honestly, my goal is to try and push people into sourcing better in general, using this as an example of why you need to do research instead of assuming something is important because it shows up a lot in the stories. It's not that hard and it's actually kind of fun to research stuff. WesleyDodds ( talk) 11:52, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree with everything Hiding just said.

(And this is just my opinion, but when it comes to WP:N, I might venture to suggest that there are few more knowledgable of the intent behind those guidelines than Hiding. That and, I've actually had the experience of working toward a GA staus of an article with Hiding. Wanna guess who did most of the sourcing work? So suggesting to Hiding that it isn't that hard, and they might find sourcing "fun", just appeared a little "odd" to me...)

As for "pushing" volunteers to help with sourcing, scroll up and see how you can help Boz and Emperor... I think they may be on to something... Not as if article drives haven't worked on Wikipedia in the past (well, actually they appear to have worked quite well : ) - jc37 12:37, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

My thinking:

The different rings are becoming increasingly important and we need something on this (drawing together various threads into one place) and if it isn't this article then it would be something very similar.
The name might be better as "Power ring (object)"
We should be able to provide more sources. PF supplies "The Science of Superheroes", which is a good start, and says a Good Article could be made from this article - surely if there is potential for a GA we should go for it? As this is an important and developing feature of the GL mythos there is quite a bit of recent material on the thinking behind this and I'll have a dig around as I have quite a bit stashed on the Orange Lanterns, too.
I would like to see more information on the creation (as opposed to in-universe origin) - who did it, when, etc. and the thinking behind the other different coloured rings. I don't see that as being impossible.
If we can source the parallels with the Lensman series then that is an important aspect that is worthy of note.

So I think the article has definite potential and there are good sources we haven't used as well as a number of other aspects to the article that need expanding. It needs work but it seems valuable and notable and worth the effort - I'll see what I can do on recent material. ( Emperor ( talk) 15:26, 5 February 2009 (UTC))

I do think we need to merge emotional spectrum with power rings - once you strip it down there isn't really an awful lot there and the concept fits with the power rings. ( Emperor ( talk) 22:53, 5 February 2009 (UTC))

(Responding here since Emperor's points echo where I was going).

There are some other things that should be kept in mind:

In writing about the contents notable works of fiction (among which it may be fair to number the stories featuring the various Green Lanterns) it is almost inevitable that in-story information is going to need to be covered. Among that information is going to be plot elements - character descriptions, character histories, plot synopsis, descriptions of locations, of equipment, and so on. And depending on the volume of information, it gets spread out over multiple articles.

In this case, on of the core elements to the Green Lantern characters and stories is the ring. That element is going to need explanation, and it is going to need it either on every article about a Green Lantern Corps member, the Corps itself, the original non-Corps GL, Sinestro, Nero, the Sinsetro Corps, the SC members, the Star Sapphires, the Red Lanterns, the Blue Lanterns, the Orange, the Indigo, the Black, the Guardians, the Manhunters... I think we'd be pushing 20+ articles at that point that would be including the same, or similar information, or one article that covers the broad strokes and all the rest can link to.

It also offers, as Emperor points out, a place to layout how the element has been treated by the writers, what it originally was supposed to be, how its concept has changed, who brought those changes in, and what other elements (which can be covered as a subsection) are dependent on it. Emotional spectrum is a very small topic that is only relevant to the current version of the rings, a one-off Legion Sub character, Ion, and Parallax. It would fit easily within a subsection in the ring article. Starheart is another example. That element was used as an explanation for a couple of things related to the rings and the Alan Scott character. It isn't substantial enough to warrant its own article and it wouldn't fit within the GL/GLC article (by weight biased to the SciFi/current rendition of the concept) or the one for Scott (possible 2 lines explaining nothing).

- J Greb ( talk) 23:57, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes there is an issue of rationalisation (as you'd do with databases) - it could be dealt with poorly in a dozen articles (where the coverage will be uninformative) or well in one. The question is if we can write a decent article. I think we can and have had a bit of a run at the origin part and added an infobox and a few more bits and bobs. Looking over the rest we can trim back the content to key examples and rewrite things in a more out-of-universe tone and there is more material in the Science of Superheroes book that I haven't used. Worth noting that the pages in the chapter held back by Google Books can be found at Amazon.com except for page 94, so we at least have most of the material to hand. ( Emperor ( talk) 04:02, 6 February 2009 (UTC))

I'm going to back J Greb and Emperor on this. If they think there's a decent article here that could inform readers and serve as an overview of the subject, and it would meet policy, I'll trust their judgement. I agree with Wesley that the current version is way off, though. Hiding T 10:00, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Infobox image MOS

What is WikiProject Comics MOS regarding infobox images of characters? I've noticed several which have been edited to crop just the character, some which have a gray filtered background, and some which have the background altered into a transparency. At present, each of the current Featured Articles for characters have infoboxes with non-edited images. Is this preferred, or is it a matter of context? Are promotional images preferred, or interior art? Original designs, or more recent incarnations? Just looking for some foundation here. -- Cast ( talk) 22:13, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Well... there's Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics/editorial guidelines#Superhero box images, but the nutshell is:

A clear image of the character showing the front in a non-contorted, non-obscured manner.
Colored, but not off-colored. Similarly, not over stylized.
The subject of the article has to be the focus of the image.
The character's most universally recognized appearance should be used.

The grayed and cut-outs are cases where other elements are in the original image and focus needs to be forced on the subject. The same is the reasoning for the close cropping. As far as the other preferences... for character articles covers as published, cover art, and interior panels are more or less of equal weight.

As for "more recent"... that's a bit loaded since the MoS point is "universally recognized appearance". The general take is that it needs to be a good image, regardless of when it was published. The rub crops up with characters that have changed costumes or had one or more make overs. In those cases the "more recent" may not be the most recognized".

There's been some talk up page and off and on that the "multiple looks" characters need to be revisited and nailed down a bit more.

- J Greb ( talk) 23:36, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Glad to see the guideline already provided. I couldn't find it last time I looked around and just assumed there wasn't one yet. I suppose I just wasn't patient enough. Thanks for the quick notes. -- Cast ( talk) 01:04, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Marvel's British comics research help request

There is a book on Marvel's British comics that has been in the pipeline for an awfully long time. Looks like the author is on the last stretch but has made a request for help with some images. The full list is here and quite a few are pretty obscure but there are some I'd think we can help with:

"Stan Lee's – How to Write Comics/Secrets of Comics (cover to the book I can't quite recall the name of right now - it's just to illustrate Stan's early work, so it's not referenced in the text that I could check the title from)."
"Fredric Wertham – Seduction of the Innocent cover."

Anyway see what you can do. ( Emperor ( talk) 23:55, 10 February 2009 (UTC))

Input on images

Cross posting from the Marvel work group...

This work group's input on the images currently used in and the proposed replacements for Eddie Brock would be welcome.

- J Greb ( talk) 12:00, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Main Page for Feb 13 2009

This... is... SPARTA!!!! BOZ ( talk) 00:17, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Spider-Man

I've done a bit of work on this one, although not much was needed, and I'd like to nominate it for Good Article. Just bringing it here first, in case someone has a really good reason not to do so. ;) BOZ ( talk) 19:38, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Doesn't it have to be referenced? - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 19:44, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

What are we lacking? BOZ ( talk) 19:50, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Depends on the reviewer, I guess, but usually they like at least one reference per paragraph. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 19:57, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I think if I nominate it, and someone is willing to put it on hold, we can identify what they think needs work, and I can try to marshall some level of support to get it passed - this tactic has worked before. :) BOZ ( talk) 20:06, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

That's fine. I usually like to have them ready to go, in hopes of a fast pass, but there's more than one way to crack an egg.- Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 21:33, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I have done the deed; now it's time to wait until someone picks it up. I may or may not be around much this weekend, so if a reviewer does pick it up in a hurry, hopefully someone else will be watching. :) BOZ ( talk) 22:39, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

The review is on hold here; if you can help, then dig in. :) I will be busy this evening, so I will just have to do what I can during the week. BOZ ( talk) 00:38, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

It might be handy to get a bit more input on the article, including from people who don't know much about the character (in fact that might be important to help pitch this at a general user). The Publication history need expanding but it also needs diving up into convenient bite-sized chunks to help people get a good grasp of developments with the character. The creation has been flagged as being a little confusing as there are lots of claims and counter-claims and it needs to be presented so the average reader can make sense of it (while still hitting all the important points and not mis-representing anyone). A big task so any input would be great - see talk page for discussion. ( Emperor ( talk) 17:24, 10 February 2009 (UTC))

I reorganized the Creation section to make it more linear perhaps and easier to follow - is it more clear now? BOZ ( talk) 17:35, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Still working on this one, little bit by little bit. Any help would be appreciated; see the review page for clues, and feel free to ask questions or make comments there. BOZ ( talk) 13:41, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

For anyone willing and able to help out, here are the kinds of things we need to get it moving along. If we can find anything to build up the critical reaction or review sort of content, that would go a long way. Also, the references need work (and I'm not sure what to do) per this comment. And, naturally, anything else you think the article might need to improve it. :) BOZ ( talk) 16:06, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I've been meaning to get to this, but I haven't had a chance as yet. Sorry. Hiding T 15:48, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Holy fucking shit! It's a GA. Nice work BOZ and others. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 01:24, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Really well done there. To keep the momentum I've started a discussion on what the next steps will be: Talk:Spider-Man#Pushing things forward. ( Emperor ( talk) 21:18, 15 February 2009 (UTC))

New 1-line navboxes...

Looks like there are new one liners going up. Currently the list is {{ Sinister Six}}, {{ League of Assassins}}, and {{ Legion of Doom (Super Friends)}}... all of which are "Members lists only".

- J Greb ( talk) 11:53, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

It underlines my feelings that we should get everyone to propose the templates first (although how you'd enforce that is another issue). ( Emperor ( talk) 17:11, 16 February 2009 (UTC))

Fantastic Four

Given the success of the Spider-Man Good Article nomination, and with a few others either nominated or soon to be nominated, I plan to nominate Fantastic Four soon. There are a lot of notes on the talk page beginning here (and we might want to archive some of the older stuff). I'm going to put some work into the article where I can during this week, so I hope to nominate FF for GA soon. :) BOZ ( talk) 04:58, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

who watches the watchmen?

With the film being released in a couple of weeks, should we have a bit of an improvement drive/clean-up on the Watchmen articles? Just to make sure they are nice and neat for a possible influx of readers ? -- Cameron Scott ( talk) 13:41, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

User:WesleyDodds patrols the Watchmen pages, so it might be worth coordinating with him/her. Watchmen had a fairly recent FAR, so it's in fairly good nick although there are a few disputes on the talk page that might merit more contributors, mainly over the plot summary and external links. I think the character articles all got merged somewhere. Don't know what the film article is like though. Hiding T 13:59, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Excellent idea, I'm planning on seeing this one soon! BOZ ( talk) 16:15, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Roy of the Rovers

Don't know if anyone's interested, but I nominated Roy of the Rovers to be the Today's Featured Article here; so weigh in if you feel like. It's the oldest FA in the WikiProject Comics queue, but I'm not familiar with the strip, although maybe someone else is? BOZ ( talk) 14:45, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Is it possible to suggest 30 May instead? In the UK that's cup final day, so it'd be like, um, if you had a comic strip about a Quarterback as the FA for superbowl day. Hiding T 16:45, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

What, like NFL Superpro? ;) I'm impatient about certain things and don't like to wait, however if this nomination doesn't go forward, remind me when May comes around and I'll try again... :) We've got 8 FA's that haven't been on the main page (and 10 that have), and I was just going to nominate them one at a time until they all get on, or I give up and forget. :) It worked for 300 a few days ago... BOZ ( talk) 18:04, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough. Hiding T 18:21, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

I do like Hiding's idea (although I don't like footie so...) and perhaps you can work through the other 7 and then aim to get Roy of the Rovers on there for 30th May - I suspect the date would help clinch it. ( Emperor ( talk) 18:57, 17 February 2009 (UTC))

It does need an infobox though but I am slightly stumped. It started out as one of the stories in the anthology comic Tiger and then got its own comic. For now it seems best to go for {{ Infobox comics character}} although a combined character/title infobox would fit better (but we don't as yet have a live version). Unless someone comes up with something clever I'll drop in the character one and we can work from there. ( Emperor ( talk) 19:23, 17 February 2009 (UTC))

Well, four Oppose votes and no Support, with some saying it's not even FA quality at the moment, so getting off to a bad start... well, if interested editors want to fix up any concerns, I'll be glad to re-nom for May 30 when the time comes. :) BOZ ( talk) 21:11, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it is FA quality and wouldn't do well as it stands if reassessed. However, there do look to be a lot of references at the end, which someone knowledgeable could make good use of. Might be worth leaving a note over there and offering to help with copy editing. ( Emperor ( talk) 03:02, 20 February 2009 (UTC))

Maybe we should do the best ones first. A few of ours should be delisted, including Roy. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 04:38, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I have withdrawn this one. If any interested editors can find the time to make sure it gets (back?) up to proper FA quality, I'll be happy to renom it for front page action in time for UK cup final day on May 30. :) (or some other date, failing that) BOZ ( talk) 01:55, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Ghost Rider problems

I was just looking at Ghost Rider (comics) and something has clearly gone wrong. I traced it back to this edit where someone inserts their own version with no formatting [1] and it has odd things like [edit] and unlinked footnotes ([1], [2], etc.) that make me suspicious that it had been cut and pasted from somewhere else but I have Googled and only found mirrors of Wikipedia. I am tempted to just revert to before this - it is not only poorly formatted but is way too long considering there is a separate article on the character so we surely only need a brief section on this. Anyone got any ideas? ( Emperor ( talk) 17:53, 22 February 2009 (UTC))

Then a couple of minutes later they did the same with the Danny Ketch section [2]. Most subsequent edits have been fixing the formatting and some bits and bobs so I'm pretty tempted to revert to before the first edit I flag and then add back in anything useful that was done. Still don't know what they were doing though. ( Emperor ( talk) 17:58, 22 February 2009 (UTC))

Solved it. The reason it kept coming back to Wikipedia was because they'd copied and pasted the unformatted text straight in for reasons that are unclear. I've put the sections back the way they are but they still seem over-detailed because they both have their own articles but I'll leave it at that for now. ( Emperor ( talk) 18:13, 22 February 2009 (UTC))

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Baltimore in fiction

This is an alert that this AfD may be of interest to this project. Bearian ( talk) 23:07, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

One of the comments there is "If memory serves me correctly, the city featured in a number of older superhero comics. Closing admin might want to put in a request at WP:Wikiproject Comics." So if anyone knows of any good examples drop them in. ( Emperor ( talk) 23:40, 24 February 2009 (UTC))

Battle of Mars

Battle of Mars was prodded. I deprodded it because I think it should be merged into First Robotech War. 76.66.193.90 ( talk) 06:10, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Stand up and take notice!

Drizzt Do'Urden was recognized as a Good Article today, just a few hours after being nominated. It took considerable work to get from where it was to where it is, but some hard work and determination got the job done. The article started off as mostly in-universe plot summary, and a lot of it was rewritten substantially or trimmed. I think the same thing can be done with any comics character with a relatively long history, if we can find a few good sources containing creator commentary, independent reviews, and the like.

Leads may need to be rewritten and lengthened in many cases, but this is not a high priority item, and could really be done last after the article is solidified as the lead is meant to be a summary of the article's contents. The character's conception, development, and input from its creators should be as substantial of a section as possible. Most comics character articles have little or nothing in regards to this sort of content; however, this surely exists somewhere for any superhero who has had a solo title for a decade or more, and the same could likely be said about superhero team members with very long tenures or really major bad guys and supporting characters. I think the succesful Drizzt GAN illustrates the point that the idea of a fictional character biography can indeed be merged with a publication history, and can be written well as an effective plot summary with a mixture of in-universe and out-of-universe text. A reception and reviews section would be nice to have, when possible, although it may be difficult to find the sources needed to compose one.

I think moving to a model more like what was accomplished with Drizzt is the way we need to go. Probably the most important task, both to establish an article's notability per WP:FICT and to improve the article in general, is to find souces that discuss a character from an out-of-universe perspective. Some notes on how the creators dreamed up the character are vital to a good article, as are notes from subsequent writers who went on to develop the character further. We'll find stuff like this in interviews (there have been hundreds, maybe thousands of interviews of comics creators!) and in books, magazine articles, blogs, etc written by the creators. Independent reviews from non-involved creators, as well as industry commentators are great, and even more important and valuable are the rare pieces written up by someone not even connected to the comics industry but who knows their stuff.

This, to me, is a far more important task than the removing of fictional history details from a character's plot summary. Adding out-of-universe details adds information, while cutting in-universe details removes information (even if it is oftentimes trivial information). The length of a fictional character biography should not be at issue, as long as it properly covers all the important events of a character's story (importance being determined on a case-by-case basis by the editors working on an article, and on the article talk page), without giving undue weight to the details more trivial to that particular character. Note that the Drizzt plot summary takes up, I'd say, about 1/3 of the article; this seems like a good size to me, somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 of an article, depending on the availability of sources for the wholly out-of-universe content. (Note, however, I'd say that forcing the plot summary to be smaller than the real world information just to keep it smaller is arbitrary and unnecessary; instead, try to increase the real world information.)

I think a lot of our B- and C-class articles could be GA's with a bit of work, and some eventually FA's, if we could get things working this way. Finding the real world info is the hard part, which is why most writers here (I'm guilty) would rather focus on the plot summary, but that shouldn't be a reason to denigrate the importance of the plot summary; plot summary is just as vital as real world commentary - if not moreso - to understanding a character. BOZ ( talk) 02:38, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

That's nice but you'd still need to remove the *current* fictional history from most of our articles and start from scratch to get them to look like that. What's in that article is a proper fictional history - most of our articles have nothing of the sort. Here you go Green Goblin or if you don't fancy that Secret Invasion. Better still if you could show me how you are going to reduce the plot summaries in Fictional history of Wolverine, Fictional history of Spider-Man great. -- Cameron Scott ( talk) 10:18, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

arg - that came as ruder than I intended - I'm on fairly strong medication due to a ongoing medical condition and it tends to make me a bit shorter than I normally am - apologies for that. What I *should* have said - I still think that the quickest and best way to deal with the problematical content in a lot of our articles is to just remove it *but* I have no problems with a plot summary of the style you have underlined there. Do we even *have* a model here for structure? If not, can we adopt something like that. The only counter to that - Captain Marvel which is held up as an example of the standard we should write to here - doesn't even have a plot summary. Are we saying that most articles will never reach FA and getting them to GA is what we should aim for? -- Cameron Scott ( talk) 11:51, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually thinking further about this, what you have got there in the "fictional character history" is the sort of content that those of removing the plot summaries are integrating into the publication histories, so what's the difference between the title change? functionally I don't think there is one. -- Cameron Scott ( talk) 11:56, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I intended the above to be more of an appeal to what can be done with a good fictional biography, rather than what we have on most comics articles currently. Most of the current bios will need to be rewritten (rather than removed, for the most part) to get them to look like they should; removing parts, and adding proper out-of-universe phrasing will probably be a lot easier and less time consuming than removing the whole deal and starting from scratch (I haven't taken that approach, and don't intend to, so I'm merely speculating). I'm certainly not going to work on these articles alone, and don't expect anyone else to either, but the lot of us need to collaborate to accomplish this goal properly. No matter what we do, improving these articles will be a long road to travel, and we need to be on the right path in order to get there.

Most comics character articles will not reach FA - that's a simple fact. For one thing, we'd need an army of regular contributors at least ten times the size of what we currently have, and even then the right sources simply don't exist for at least a good half or more of the characters we have articles on, making FA impossible for them. GA, however, should be a goal for most of our articles (and here I mean articles on series, creators, films, etc as well), and not be seen as "settling", but an achievement to be proud of. FA is really hard to get to, but GA is not. A few months ago (Sept/Oct) I stated my intent to start organizing a drive to take as many comics articles to GA as possible; this did not happen, because I realized the D&D project was far more in need of my attention than the comics project. Since then, we've had four successful GA's, which about doubles what we had previously. If we can accomplish that with on a much smaller market such as an RPG, imagine what we can do on this much larger market? I viewed Drizzt as a test article; some people say he shouldn't have an article, but I think the 20,000 or so hits it gets per month argues otherwise. ;) With a dedicated work effort over the period of two weeks, the article practically walked into GA status. This is what we need to be doing here, and this effort will successful if people are willing to roll up their sleeves and dig in. I mention above that characters (and teams, I forgot) who have had a title for at least a decade should have more than enough sourcing to enable a GA. We can get Spider-Man, Thor, Hulk, Captain America, Iron Man, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, Avengers, Justice League, Fantastic Four, and X-Men to FA eventually for certain, and the same could be said for major iconic baddies like Doctor Doom and the Green Goblin. If we start working on those, focusing on them one or two at a time, we can get those characters (and Doctor Strange, Namor, Wolverine, Deadpool, Black Panther, Mar-Vell, and many more) to GA. When we've built up a nice stable of GA's (or even as we do it), then I think we can cherry pick for potential FA's.

As regards the fictional character biography/history/whatever you call it, the title used is immaterial. The sort of content we need would be descriptive, and out-of-universe. This doesn't mean that every single sentence needs to say "In this issue... in this story..." etc, but a regular reminder that you are reading the story of a fictional character and not the biography of a real person is essential. Some details do need to be removed or shortened: this character was one of dozens involved in this battle, this character witnessed an event, this character fought such-and-such for the fiftieth time. Some details do need to be preserved: this character was central to a particular storyline, this character had a major change of some sort, this character was believed dead for a long time, this character lost a loved one, this character got married, etc. WP:OR needs to be avoided, meaning we need to pare down details to what can actually be observed by reading the comic alone. The bios need to come in order of publication, rather than including retcons out of place. I'm sure there are other issues which do not spring immediately to my mind. However, as I stated above, working on the fictional history is not the only thing that needs to be done with most of our character articles, and I feel it's not even usually the most important thing to start with. There are two ways I can think of to make an article better: removing extraneous details makes an article less bad, but providing commentary/reviews/analysis, etc makes an article more good.

It may be difficult to get the momentum going at first, and keep it going, but if we can get motivated and get working together, we can get it done. Six months ago, the D&D project was basically dead; now, we are arguably more active than ever, and certainly better focused. Let's do that here, too. BOZ ( talk) 16:25, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Excellent points, and I support them. I think the subhead title does matter for what it signals: "Publication history" rather than "Fictional character biography" reinforces that we're talking about fictional characters that exist only insofar as flesh-and-blood people create and publish them, and that whatever these characters are or do come from the perspective of creators' concerns and real-world events — the Zeitgeist, as it were. More later when I have time to think about this some more.... -- Tenebrae ( talk) 21:40, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

This is more along the lines of what I was thinking - we should be targeting C and B articles which are usually in good shape for improvement. Aiming at the plot in Start articles is only going to lead to articles getting gutted as there just isn't enough material to work with (which isn't to say they can never get there but it can be a slow process accumulating the goodies and gutting an article is only going to stall development, as who is going to work on something when someone else is going to come along and remove it?). Setting a good example with the more popular articles can have a trickle down effect to others (as non-Project editors are going to work by precedent most of the time). It isn't going to get fast results but focusing on improving articles is going to get guaranteed results. ( Emperor ( talk) 22:39, 24 January 2009 (UTC))

Good deal. :) With the run of success that we've had on D&D articles (2/3 of the GA attempts successful so far!), I'd love to get going on comics articles. Let's look for some B (and C, when possible) articles that already have some creator commentary, reviews, etc, and get working on expanding those parts, and trimming back on the FCB to the most relevant points and mixing in the PH content when available. I'll try to find some time to sift through the B category (and unreviewed B, and C, eventually) and find some stuff to work on, and bring my findings back here for us to discuss which ones we want to start with. Working together, we can do it. :) BOZ ( talk) 01:17, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Silver Age of Comics is about ready to go. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 01:24, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

It's marked as C-class - if you feel that's sufficiently out of date, care to do the honors? :) I'll do what I can on that one, if anything, but you and Tenebrae have been the main ones working on it, and probably can handle that one better than anyone else. BOZ ( talk) 02:12, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

I'll probably take care of it myself. It's almost done, anyways. I don't like to move my "own" articles to B anymore, some people frown on it. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 02:19, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Good point. :) Whenever you're ready then, I'll at least be watching, and helping in whatever capacity I can. BOZ ( talk) 02:32, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

I've done the B-class assessment - easy pass. If we had an era infobox or just a comic era one that'd be handy (the former seems to make sense as there are an awful lot of these). ( Emperor ( talk) 03:20, 25 January 2009 (UTC))

That would be cool. I used to do a lot of template stuff, but I've kinda lost my touch. One of these days I want to improve the golden age article. I think it will be really easy to ref compared to Silver. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 03:27, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Good collab and ideas so far, guys! Agree we should start with upgrading the Bs and Cs. As for Silver Age of Comics, I've got my copy of Daniel Herman's Silver Age: The Second Generation of Comics Book Artists, plus Craig "Mr. Silver Age" Shutt's Baby Boomer Comics and other books right next to me as we speak.

This growing consensus feels right, and a momentum appears to be building. -- Tenebrae ( talk) 18:25, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

J Greb has thrown together an example of an era infobox here. Feel free to throw in your thoughts there. ( Emperor ( talk) 00:20, 28 January 2009 (UTC))

I've added the infobox to the relevant comics articles - seems to work nicely and pulls them together into a consistent set of articles. See what you think. ( Emperor ( talk) 16:12, 28 January 2009 (UTC))

Only because I was already there and editing this stub-class article, I've made a stab at doing Dark Avengers under this emerging standard combining PH & FCB. Putting it out there now for comment. -- Tenebrae ( talk) 19:41, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

I was also thinking about Ares (Marvel Comics), as he is going to a member of Dark Avengers he is going to be of interest to people but he currently has no PH (and it looks like the FCB is written in-universe chronology) and I know there are plenty of sources for the mini-series and more recent work (which I'll set about rummaging around for) - anyone got anything on his origin? ( Emperor ( talk) 23:37, 25 January 2009 (UTC))

By the way, I do want to point out that what Emporer added to Green Goblin recently was exactly what I was getting at above, and exactly where we need to be heading. Emp, if you want to work on Ares, make sure to get some good info for sourcing his villain days as well. I remember one point, not even all that long ago, where the bio basically said "Yeah, he was a villain, but let's spend most of this article talking about 2006 and on...", forgetting the fact that he spent about 40 years of comics' history as a bad guy. ;) BOZ ( talk) 04:26, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, a litte over a year ago, one paragraph about him being a bad guy. ;) Of course, even now, it's still very heavily slanted towards the more recent material, but a few paragraphs is better than one. :) BOZ ( talk) 04:47, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Been busy, but meant to work on this today... there are currently 117 articles in the Category:Reviewed B-Class Comics articles, and since this is more than I expected (haven't looked at the cat in awhile), I can't very well make much progress before going to bed. ;) I will endeavor to get started on this tomorrow, God willing! Might as well start there, both because it is a much smaller cat than Category:B-Class Comics articles needing review and Category:C-Class Comics articles, and because at least we know most of these are proper B's; I will come back to the "needing review" pile and confirmed C-class articles after having looked at the for-sure B's. BOZ ( talk) 06:40, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Did it; this is getting long (mostly my fault), so let's continue in the below section. BOZ ( talk) 19:16, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, it seems that the move towards a solid PH instead of a FCB is gaining momentum. I've made in-roads into this field with a few articles, and will continue to do my bit. Asgardian ( talk) 10:31, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I think we need to make th PH sections have more inline citations of issues. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 10:35, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

YES. :) Sourcing is probably more important there than anywhere else! BOZ ( talk) 16:11, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Note that I have begun working on Spider-Man and Fantastic Four, and commenting on their talk pages; these two are prime examples of the sort of thing that we should be aspiring to, even though I personally would like more plot summary on them. ;) BOZ ( talk) 22:26, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I did some work on Fantastic Four in the past in an attempt to craft sort of a template for comics teams articles. Hence the "The Team" section, which deals with the main character akin to cast lists in film articles and "Characters of..." articles. No going into detail about fictional history; just giving the basics on each character and explaining their real-world origins and how creators view them in relation to the team. While the FF debuted as a team in their first appearance and it has a very specific iconic lineup regardless of all the replacements members, I feel a similiar layout can be employed for other team articles. WesleyDodds ( talk) 06:43, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I noticed that setup. It works well for the FF, but it might be harder for the Avengers; which of the 347 members are the most worthy of a paragraph? ;) BOZ ( talk) 13:48, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

BTW, thanks for all the work you put in previously into the FF article, and hopefully you will want to help more as we try to get it to GA. :) BOZ ( talk) 03:24, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Spider-Man has been picked up for review, ironically enough by the same reviewer who got Drizzt. :) BOZ ( talk) 22:19, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi, guys. Over on the Black Bolt Talk Page in October we had a discussion about the use of book and story names and dates in the text. I argued for them, as they gave a historical context for the FCB's and PH's, and Asgardian argued against them. When I argued that WP requires out-universe for writing about fiction, he replied that "guidelines are just that, guidelines". He has recently linked to this page as a point where a reformatting of articles is taking place, and indicated that this discussion has continued the issue of mentioning books titles, storyline names and dates in the text. He favors removing them, and I do not. However, I do not see any mention of this issue in this section. Can you look over the Black Bolt Talk Page section, read his arguments against them, and my arguments for them, and give your thoughts on the matter? Thanks. Nightscream ( talk) 06:43, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, you're right in that we're not discussing any such thing here. :) By and large, Asgardian's rewrites seem to consist of either lists of appearances, or an out-of-universe version of the Fictional Character Biography (as opposed to the usual in-universe version), or a combination of the two. A true Publication History (of which comics characters articles, sadly, have very few) would discuss the character's origin for awhile - not the fictional origin, but a description of how the writer and artist conceived the character, what influences inspired the character's creation, and how the creators conceived of the character's role in the title they were appearing in; see Spider-Man#Creation for a good example of this, although most characters won't be able to have as long of a description. After the character's creation, the PH would then go on to describe the titles the character made major appearances in, how sales were affected, any starring roles in titles, and that sort of thing; again, this might not be very long for most characters. As I envision it, an FCB, if further needed at that point, would contain a summary the fictional story details of the character which were not appropriate to place in the prior section, preferrably done in a mostly out-of-universe style, with citations to the comic issues described therein. That, I think, is the jist of what I was trying to get into above. :) BOZ ( talk) 13:46, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

That's pretty much what it appeared to be when I read this section, but Asgardian was insisting that this discussion, among others, was about the things I just mentioned. For the record, does anyone here think that story and book titles and their dates should be removed from the explicit text, and kept solely in the References, as Asgardian has argued (and edited) at times? Thanks. Nightscream ( talk) 02:47, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Again, it's a yes and no answer.

There are sections and information that should include story and/or magazine titles in the text and there are section where they should only be in the footnote. And to be clear on that, even if a story or specific issue is noted in the text, a footnote likely should exist as well.

The idea should be to produce an article that has an even flow when read. Not one that is choppy either by over-repetition of titles and dated or by the reader constantly having to hit the footnotes to under stand where/when something occurred. - J Greb ( talk) 14:07, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

What he said. :) The format that Asgardian has been championing lately has often been a pretty hard read, but I think in the case that Nightscream and he were fighting over, the titles work just fine at the beginning of sentences/sections. BOZ ( talk) 15:29, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

That kinda sounds like the format that I've observed to work best. For example, when I created this section in the Multiple Man article (and a near-identical one in the Siryn article), I found that even though there were six different issues that supported the info, it didn't seem to work right to mention every one, so I mentioned the one that depicted the instigating event in the beginning of the passage, and in the middle of the passage, the issue in Siryn goes into labor (and arguably, even that could conceivably be removed; I left it in to indicate the passage of time). Is this what you two are talking about? Nightscream ( talk) 03:50, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Makes sense - I don't think there is a big need for sentences saying "the character appeared in Hulk #36 (June 1963), Thor (vol. 2) #8 (April 1969)" and on and on. There were two problems with what Asgardian was doing in relation to this: Stripping out pretty much everything else leading to long listy sentences. Flesh them out and use the relevant bit for identification and footnote the rest. So "In 1963<ref>''Hulk'' #36 (June 1963)</ref> and Thor (vol. 2) #8<ref>''Thor'' (vol. 2) #8 (April 1969)"</ref>" so that it flows better and people can check the detail if they want. Also don't be afraid of story elements, as WP:PLOT and WP:WAF], don't say "no plot" just keep it brief and keep it out-of-universe (mentioning the specific issues and years, as well as the writers, helps keep things from getting too in-universe). As it is an encyclopaedia you have to get the balance right between being informative and being readable. The example section you give is on its way - it just needs a bit more of an out-of-universe tweak> What it doesn't need is stripping back to the issue numbers and a bit of dry connecting text - which is where the concerns were being raised. ( Emperor ( talk) 04:18, 19 February 2009 (UTC))

I can't remember which article, but Asgardian and I had a little chat and he put the issue #'s into ref tags. It looked better and read a lot more smoothly. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 04:23, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Which example were you referring to, Emperor? The Madrox/Siryn one? What out-universe tweak would you prescribe? Nightscream ( talk) 22:38, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

booster gold and new articles

A whole rash of new Booster Gold article have appeared in the last day - we have Booster Gold (2007-) about the series, and then 52 Pick-Up (Booster Gold), Blue and Gold (Booster Gold), Vicious Cycle (Booster Gold), Stars in Your Eyes (Booster Gold) for the individual issues. I just don't feel those individual arcs are notable and should be merged. comments? suggestions? -- Cameron Scott ( talk) 16:16, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Looking at it? It's a Buffy editor branching out. And it's the same damn problem most of the Buffy comics articles have - There must be an index article for the series and there must be an "episode" article even though it will be mostly OR and PLOT.

My 2¢ on what to do with the articles would be:

See if any of real world context can be folded into Booster Gold#Publication history. This may mean adding {{ Infobox comic book title}} (a combined character/series title 'box is in the "working on it" stage) and a "Collected editions" section to the article. If this is done, at least 90% of the PLOT can be flushed.
If the mess can't be easily ported, then relocate Booster Gold (2007-) to Booster Gold (comic book). After that, fold in the arcs, add in like information for 1980s series, and trim/hold the PLOT to an absolute minimum.
Last option would be noming for AfDs.

I'd likely go in stages - Run option 2 first. If that results in a really small article, move on to option 1.

- J Greb ( talk) 18:18, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Agree on all fronts - there is no real world content and you could easily switch them all into redirects to the Booster Gold. That article should be improved and then if we see a real need for a separate article on the character and comic book, then we can discuss it but this situation is rare and usually only happens when they are a long running character (for example Batman (comic book) and Superman (comic book) and I have been wondering if we need something of the same for Flash (comics) and Wonder Woman, but Booster Gold just doesn't seem to have generated enough material to warrant a split like that). ( Emperor ( talk) 21:25, 15 February 2009 (UTC))

Also Abe Sapien: Drums of the Dead. ( Emperor ( talk) 03:27, 19 February 2009 (UTC))

I redirected the arc articles to Booster Gold (2007-) - I'm a bit busy, anyone able to rustle up some publication stuff or are we going to redirect it to booster gold? -- Cameron Scott ( talk) 17:05, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't see any need for such an article at the moment. There is plenty of the plot in the article [3] but the PH is weak. I think adding that back to the the main article would help bulk up the PH and I can look around for sources. It may be at some point we need a separate article but the article needs rewriting and the more detailed plot elements trimming back - not something splitting off on the comic book (which would pretty much replicate the content of the main article). ( Emperor ( talk) 19:56, 19 February 2009 (UTC))

True... and on a side note... the editor has been going great guns on the Hellboy related series... - J Greb ( talk) 22:44, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

This List of Hellboy comics concerned me, so I've dropped them a note: User talk:Mutt#List of Hellboy comics. Some of the trades are going to need quite a bit of work to nail down notability and the one-shots don't stand a chance. I'm happy to be bold but it'd be easier to head this off at the pass.

On a side note I had planed to split off part of the Hellboy article to create a "Hellboy (franchise)" article and, while that list is going to be a bit thin it'd be a start for such an article. Thoughts? ( Emperor ( talk) 02:52, 20 February 2009 (UTC))

Just a note to say that they have redirected the one-shots and short mini-series to the existing articles on the trade paperbacks, which is reasonable. I'll see what I can do about adding a bit more depth to those articles. ( Emperor ( talk) 16:15, 24 February 2009 (UTC))

Although they have started this: Hellboy fictional timeline. ( Emperor ( talk) 01:22, 26 February 2009 (UTC))

I've moved the article to Booster Gold (volume 2) per WP:NCC, though in looking it and Booster Gold over, perhaps we should simply have Booster Gold (comic book), and cover both volumes in a single article? - jc37 18:05, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Or merge it all back into Booster Gold? But yes if we are going to have a separate article on the title then (comic book) seems the way to go. Just ask yourself if we'd have ever split such an article off though. ( Emperor ( talk) 15:04, 24 February 2009 (UTC))

X-23

An anonymous editor and I are having a disagreement about a little something and I'd like to maybe get some other thoughts on this before a foolish edit war comes about. Now, while I don't keep up with the comings and goings of the X-23 character, I'm pretty sure that the character is supposed to be a female clone taken from a DNA sample the Weapon X Program had left over from Wolverine. This other editor seems to think that X-23 is more akin to a twin of Wolverine and not a clone, although X-23 is referred to as a clone in every character bio I've ever read on her, including the article she has on Wikipedia. Any insight is appreciated. Odin's Beard ( talk) 04:04, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, she's a clone. [4] There may be some retcon going on that I don't know about, though. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 04:22, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

As far as I know, there's been no retcon. He's taking this information from the first issue of an X-23 mini-series that began in March 2005, the "Innocence Lost" storyline. Sarah Kinney, the woman in charge of the project, explains that she plans to build a viable clone embryo from the genetic sample from the original Weapon X. She specifically uses the word "clone". Later in the issue, it's explained that Y chromosome from the sample was damaged, hence they had trouble creating a male. She suggests duplicating the intact X chromosome and create a female specimen. She explains that while this would not produce a clone per se, the resulting specimen would be a genetic twin for all intents and purposes. Now, the fact that she was created from Wolverine's genetic material isn't changed, only that her gender had to be altered for the process to be successful. X-23's profile in the OHOTMU styled X-Men: Messiah Complex - Mutant Files released in December '07 clearly states that she's a clone. Odin's Beard ( talk) 23:20, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, a clone is a genetic twin, I think, so maybe you can compromise and say include the info that she's a clone and genetic twin of wolvy. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 00:16, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Bane GA

Looks like Bane (comics) has been nominated. Personally I can't see how it'll pass (see my B-class assessment) as WP:WAF is one of our GA "hoops" and the PH is minimal and there must be much more on the background and development that can be added, but I'll keep quiet about that and see if there is anything I can do to help, like copy editing. If anyone has any information that could help then feel free to pitch in (I was hoping to find something useful on the Knightfall page but there isn't much there either). ( Emperor ( talk) 18:07, 25 February 2009 (UTC))

We'll see! Definitely agreed that the PH needs work. I put the review page on my watchlist. BOZ ( talk) 18:36, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Ellipsis in titles...

Just wondering what people thought about the use of ellipsis in titles as in The Dark Horse Book of.... I had redlinked The Dark Horse Book of along the lines of The Big Book of, which I started. ( Emperor ( talk) 01:25, 26 February 2009 (UTC))

I think either way is fine, but they should all be the same, to prevent red link problems. The ellipses add a nice bit of info to the title, but they also look unlike other wiki article titles. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 01:34, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Well... I'd still leave things like The Dark Horse Book of and The Dark Horse Book of... as redirects to The Dark Horse Book of…. They are more likely what readers will be typing to look for the article and what most editors will put into a link. - J Greb ( talk) 03:06, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

The thing editors would be most likely to type is The Dark Horse Book of and then The Dark Horse Book of... because of the special character in the last one. You can also use the formulation The Big Book of#Death, which is perhaps the most natural.

However, as PF says, it doesn't matter that much as long as we are consistent. Are there no guidelines which touch on this? ( Emperor ( talk) 04:50, 26 February 2009 (UTC))

Anon

This anon wasn't reverted, but I'm not sure there edits were helpful. I reverted the Silver Age edit. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 04:19, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that Key Issues of the Modern Age is subjective, where the similar list on Silver Age Comics isn't. We might want to decide on a useful source (can we use the same one as on Silver Age?). ( Emperor ( talk) 04:46, 26 February 2009 (UTC))

My bad. I thought they removed Dr. Strange, but they added him. Other edits like this are debatable, I guess. The overstreet guide has lists, but you can't get them online. The golden age list is 100 comics long, for instance. The others are shorter. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 04:51, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Lamest edit war EVAR

Perhaps taking advantage of Asgardian being blocked, they are at it again on Galactus. 204.153.84.10 ( talk) 00:33, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

And other "Marvel cosmic" articles such as Silver Surfer, Living Tribunal, and Runner (comics). I've long wondered if there were socks involved in these silly disputes. 71.194.32.252 ( talk) 23:58, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Conflict still ongoing... 204.153.84.10 ( talk) 15:26, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Personally I've never deliberately used a sock (which is a very suspicious comment coming from an ip user), and in the very few cases where I've been unitentionally logged out, I've made a note that it was me in a following edit. Asgardian's history did feature a discovered sockpuppet however. In any case, it's not 'taking advantage' or anything of the sort, strictly toning down blatantly contradicted pov hyperbole. Dave ( talk) 16:57, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

It takes two (or three, or four) to edit war, regardless of any other contributing factors. This group edit warring is disruptive from all involved parties. 204.153.84.10 ( talk) 20:04, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

In the case of Galactus, it is this article's top four editors who have been reverting each other, and for a long time now I presume. 204.153.84.10 ( talk) 20:11, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Article alerts

Are we using this? Where? - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 07:02, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, we're the sample WikiProject on that page. ;) BOZ ( talk) 08:08, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Do we have a subpage or something? - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 09:05, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

No idear. :) BOZ ( talk) 13:24, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics/Article alerts. I had this set up a whiles ago as a test, thought I mentioned it here somewhere. I requested it way back in July, when it was suggested as an idea. Hiding T 13:38, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

People are aware of Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics/Cleanup listing as well aren't they? Or has that slipped off the radar? Hiding T 13:54, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

That sorely needs an update. :) BOZ ( talk) 16:15, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

It works by trawling database dumps rather than on a live version of Wikipedia. It can't be updated until the next database dump. They're supposed to be every two months, but it appears we're a little behind. Hiding T 19:23, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Ah, one of those bots... so, since October then? Those types of bots are crippled by the lack of new data dumps. BOZ ( talk) 23:23, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Looks like the bots are finally updating again, with a brand new data dump. :) BOZ ( talk) 20:04, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Would it be possible to put Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics/Article alerts in a three column hidden panel, possibly in the talks page header, but at the very least we could slot in here (with a "more" link to WP:CMC/NB)? ( Emperor ( talk) 14:53, 20 February 2009 (UTC))

I added it to {{ WPCMC}}, but I haven't a clue how to add it as a three column hidden panel in the talks page header. Sounds like it should be done though. I'm having computer issues at the minute, but is there an example I could learn how to do it from? Hiding T 15:49, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Although not an expert... I'd suggest lifting this code:

<div style="font-size: 80%; -webkit-column-count:3; -moz-column-count:3; column-count:3">{{Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics/Article alerts}}</div>

Then wrap it in a clever show/hide template. Sounds easy ;) ( Emperor ( talk) 22:14, 20 February 2009 (UTC))

I couldn't get it to work. So I copied {{ Physics Member Navbox}} instead. You can see what I did in this edit, so if you want to tweak anything, tweak away. Hiding T 11:10, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Looks great - should be very useful. ( Emperor ( talk) 15:49, 21 February 2009 (UTC))

I actually was working on this. The coder has changed it so that it's more configurable, so that we can merge it to the noticeboard. I just haven't gotten that far. I'll see if I can re-figure out how it works over the next few days... - jc37 18:09, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like a plan! Hiding T 19:24, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

The Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics/Cleanup listing has been updated by the bot. BOZ ( talk) 15:56, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Spider-Man: One More Day

OK, I believe that Spider-Man: One More Day is in decent shape, so I'm about to nominate it as a Good Article. You have a few seconds to stop me if you find something critically wrong; otherwise, just fix it before the reviewer spots it. ;) Most likely, it will not be picked up until between 2-20 days from now, so no rush. You can put the review page on your watchlist at any time. BOZ ( talk) 03:16, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

I've done a few runs through now, tweaked bits and dropped other thoughts into the talk page - as everything I've noticed have been addressed I think it is looking pretty solid but a few extra eyes giving it a read-through can't hurt, especially with an eye to how it reads and if all the relevant information is there. I can't see any big problems but it helps to check. ( Emperor ( talk) 15:05, 22 February 2009 (UTC))

Oh yeah, one key thing I just remembered... The actual plot summary could use some citations. :) Would anyone be able to break that down by the four issues in which it took place? BOZ ( talk) 15:11, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

OK this is close so if anyone can help out clarifying a point (probably just needs the wording tweaked) and possibly finding another image to help flesh out the article) it looks like it should be set up nicely for a pass. ( Emperor ( talk) 21:01, 22 February 2009 (UTC))

Success! :) BOZ ( talk) 02:53, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Good stuff. Thanks to the input and enthusiasm from everyone it was a petty solid GA by the time it passed so shooting for an A wouldn't be outrageous. If you have any ideas then drop them in on the talk page over there. It should prove to be a pretty good example of what can be done with a storyline - these types of articles have a lot of potential because they are self-contained and recent high profile ones will have plenty of interviews, reviews and sales figures that we can draw on. ( Emperor ( talk) 16:28, 26 February 2009 (UTC))

Great job guys. -- Cameron Scott ( talk) 16:41, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Alpha Flight characters

The articles for the Alpha Flight characters state that the characters who were killed by the Collective were the time-displaced versions. For example, the Guardian's article states "Alpha Flight (Sasquatch, Major Mapleleaf II, Puck Jr., and the time-displaced versions of Guardian, Vindicator, Shaman, and Puck) are brutally attacked by The Collective", in New Avengers #16. Their bodies are left in the Yukon Territory as the Collective continues on to the United States. The time-displaced Guardian was later confirmed dead by Sasquatch, while the original Guardian is presumedly still on the Plodex homeworld with the other members of Alpha Flight."

Does anyone know if this is accurate? -- DrBat ( talk) 16:18, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Sounds more like a hopeful fanboy then anything. There would have been issue numbers to prove the 'return'. Lots42 ( talk) 21:29, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Template:Fantastic Four

Sheesh, anyone seen Template:Fantastic Four lately? Excessive, or not? BOZ ( talk) 02:37, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Ah that is nothing - you want a big template then try {{ X-Men}} not only is it really long but it has two templates embedded in it - expand both and you have a template as long as your arm!! I kind of thought that we could reduce the size of templates by splitting off other media - I wasn't thinking they'd be jammed back in.

So no to these big templates - there is usually an easy way to slim things down. I'd also be wary of a list of enemies because, unless they've got some well-defined set of rogues then it is either bordering on original research or (within a larger fictional universe like we have here) they are not going to be specific to just one group/individual. ( Emperor ( talk) 03:38, 27 February 2009 (UTC))

To be fair, the templates can be modded to allow the links to be resident, just not accessable on most of the articles. The only ones that would have "full list" would be the "home article"

Using those two as examples:

FF
- Villains - Trimmed down to a notable handful (5-7) that will always show with the rest that are FF-centric (things like Beyonder and Onslaught, which are "full MU" villains, being pulled) showing on other villain articles.
- The Frightful Four is a rub. I would restructure it to fold the members into it on the team and members articles so " Frightful Four (Hydro-Man • Klaw • Titania • Trapster • Wizard) " pops up.
- Supporting characters - Same as the villains, though it may need an internal split between supporting cast and "alternate members".
- Titles - Limited to the publications. And having a "Storylines" subsection added.
- Television & Films - Limited to both showing in the IOM articles.
- Related articles - Along with the storylines splitting out, the other IOMs can be split out.
X-Men
- Pretty much the same as above...
- Pull the subs out and remove "double" placements. (I'd also be tempted to advocate trout slapping editors that insist on re-inserting them...)

I'd suggested something similar with {{ Batman}} but it hasn't really been looked at as an option...

- J Greb ( talk) 04:15, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Robotech articles

There's a mass reorganization, merging, etc proposal up for Robotech at WT:ANIME 76.66.193.90 ( talk) 11:13, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Cleanup listing

As Boz noted above, the Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics/Cleanup listing has been updated by the bot. What is probably the first task is checking out the following sections of the page:

and

Krypton (comics) is our worst article by number of tags.

Separate to that, I'm wondering if it is time to simply cull anything that has been tagged with a fact tag since before 2008? Hiding T 16:42, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Source it, or toss it, I'd say, if we're talking about stuff tagged over a year ago and not yet fixed. BOZ ( talk) 16:54, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I suppose it depends. If it looks like it should be sourcable and contributes to the article then I'd probably leave it in (it isn't going to get sourced if it isn't there after all). Otherwise I'd move it to the talk page and if someone passes through who can source it then they can pick it up and drop it back in. If you were, for example, shooting for a B and the information wasn't vital and was holding everything back then I'd sneak it off to the talk page (which is what I suspect we need to do with parts of Stan Lee, as the bulk of the article is good but homages/parodies is an almost unsourcable magnet for original research - such sections can doom an article for being a perma-C and I'd support moving them to the talk page, or even dumping them if they seem trivial and you can't see the point of having them back in). ( Emperor ( talk) 20:00, 27 February 2009 (UTC))

I get your point of view, but I'm starting to think that we have stuff that dates as far back as 2006, and we need to really think about drastic action. One point of view is that if we remove it, it might actually mean it does get sourced, since someone who re-adds it would be a go to to challenge for a source, if you see what I mean. But yes, I was thinking that there should be a reasoned approach to it. I mean, it's quite possible a lot of the fact tags could be replaced with issue tags if they're in the fictional biography. Hiding T 20:04, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Definitely - there were some comments a while back which suggested {{ issue}} was an effective tag (I assume people might worry that they can't find any secondary source and this might prompt them to add in a primary one, which may be all that is required at that point).

Also worth bearing in mind that it is possible that having a section on the talk page with information that needs sourcing could help get them sourced, as the request could be lost in the article (useful facts, I'm not adverse to dumping unsourced trivia)). However, I suspect there are some unsourced statements that the article needs (the kind of thing that we know is true but we still need to prove) so removing them might not work, so I'd be loath to suggest a blanket removal. However, if an article relies on a fact we haven't sourced for 3 years then the article has real problems. I'd suggest dropping a note in here and we'll bust our collective balls to source it. ( Emperor ( talk) 20:15, 27 February 2009 (UTC))

Fictional history of Spider-Man

Rather than break the 3RR, I'll post here to see if I can get some help. Someone keeps removing the reference on Fictional history of Spider-Man to Spidey meeting Barack Obama, with no explanation. 71.194.32.252 ( talk) 07:32, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure I've read something that demonstrates that while it is specifically Obama in the AS-M issue the new black president in Dark Reign is never specified. Now it is obvious that it is him but it is not confirmed so I assume they are removing it as original research, which is not unreasonable given the circumstances (although they should explain their edits to help avoid this kind of confusion). ( Emperor ( talk) 14:45, 24 February 2009 (UTC))

That was a nice theory, but I took out Obama's name and just said "President of the US", but was still reverted. Don't know why. 71.194.32.252 ( talk) 02:04, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Should I just leave it alone, or would I be fighting an ongoing edit war into forever? 71.194.32.252 ( talk) 04:34, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

OK, here's the explanation finally: [6] 71.194.32.252 ( talk) 16:42, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Life in Hell cartoon

I'm trying to clean up alt.tv.simpsons and one line is really bugging me. It is:

"In a 1994 Life in Hell cartoon Matt Groening implied that he read the newsgroup."

The reference for it is:

Groening, Matt ( w, a). Life in Hell. October 28, 1994, Acme Features Syndicate.

The line was there before I started to work on the article and I want to know what exactly Matt Groening was implying in that cartoon. It needs to be more specific. Does anyone have that cartoon and is able to help me? -- Maitch ( talk) 05:08, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm no help at all, sorry. I think it should probably be removed from teh article, since it looks like it might be speculation, based on the use of the word "implied". Hiding T 13:04, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Noticeboard and archiving

Wikipedia:Article alerts

As it stands right now, it doesn't archive. Though past alerts are retained in the page's edit history.

What I'd like to know from everyone is: Is this enough? Do we care if the noticeboard is archived?

Note that this would only affect those things which AA does: deletion discussions; FC/GC, RM, RfC, and peer review. New pages created and RfCs not posted at RfC would be unaffected. - jc37 10:36, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

If people add afd deletion debates to Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Comics and animation then they're automatically archived to Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Comics and animation/archive. I'd like to see something similar done for mergers and moves, but I've never worked out bot coding. Hiding T 10:59, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
That's also cool, but it doesn't exactly answer the question.

Do we care if the comics project noticeboard archives deletion discussions or requests for x?

If the WP deletion sorting is deemed fine as far as the deletion discussions, then I will go deprecate that section of the noticeboard, directly replacing it with articles alerts. (Noting that deletion sorting only lists AfD, though.)

I would guess that no one really cares whether requested moves are archived here, since they mostly affect the page moved. (and so, only need to be listed here as a "notice", while archived at the article itself.)

Same with merges.

And for peer review, it already has it's own page, so probably no reason to archive them also at the noticeboard.

FC, I'm not so sure about. It would be nice to have the links to the various attempts all in one place.

RFCs, especially those concerning project editors, on the other hand, should probably be archived here.

What do you think? - jc37 09:19, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

So does anyone besides Hiding and me care about this?

I'm about ready to disassemble the archiving somewhat, and integrate Article alerts, per the above.

I just don't want people to say: "Oh, I missed that discussion!" : ) - jc37 18:42, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Coordinators' working group

Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. - Drilnoth ( talk) 00:28, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Already there, dude. ;) BOZ ( talk) 02:40, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Hey BOZ! :) I added you as a comicsproj coordinator, since you weren't listed specifically for this project. Feel free to revert if you'd rather not be on the list. - Drilnoth ( talk) 02:48, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

That's fine; I can be a cheerleader for two WikiProjects. BOZ ( talk) 03:01, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

lol I actually like it being defined as a "cheerleader" : )

As an aside, typically I might suggest that Hiding would be the ideal one to represent the project, but upon my asking previously, he has declined.

Any of you other admins (or editors, for that matter, one need not be an admin to help), interested in representing us as well? : ) - jc37 04:42, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I've been following the discussions, and will continue to do so, and I would suggest everyone from the comicsproj do the same. Hiding T 12:04, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Update

There's a lot of discussion about removing FA and GA from WikiProject assessment scales, because apparently they are incompatible. I'm resistant to this, and I am apparently representing all you lot, so it's best if I let you in on my thinking and what I understand, and you let me in what you think and what you understand, or something like that. The thinking is that FA and GA are given by the community while B-Class and A-Class are given by WikiProjects, and that the community reviews are more style led and the WikiProject reviews are more content led, so they seem to compete and get in the way of each other. And I think there's also a worry that there aren't a lot of A-Class articles. My counter argument is that thinking that the community and WikiProjects are somehow separate is kind of silly; what are WikiProjects if not a part of the community. I always thought you had WikiProject Wikipedia, which was like, everyone, and then you had that broken down into subject specific groups which were task forces of that community and still very much a part of it. So I don;t get the idea of any separation. I'm also not understanding how an article can be rated GA if the WikiProject don't feel it is a GA. Look at our thoughts on Bane, for example, and I know Fram has de-listed GA's not up to scratch in the pass. I think I have too. My main proposal is to leave things as they are; it seems to work out okay, and let's not get too hung up about not having that many A-Class articles. Let's get hung up about not having too many Featured articles. Hiding T 20:58, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't understand. So, if an article gets better than a B, then we can't list it on a Wikiproject as anything better than a B if this goes into effect? I'm not following. As it is, GAs and FAs are totally different from each other already; several editors have to agree that an article should be FA, but you only have to convince one reviewer for a GA (unless it goes to review). Anyone can assign an A or B or any other lower rating, even someone not working with a wikiproject (I've done it quite a few times), so the whole discussion seems fairly arbitrary to me. BOZ ( talk) 21:18, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, if it gets better than a B but not good enough to be an A, then yes, it would stay a B. I'm finding the discussion very arbitrary too I'm trying to ask questions to get a better understanding and see what the real underlying issue is. Hiding T 22:06, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, because I've got really no idea. As I understand it, if an article meets the GA criteria and a reviwer promotes it, then we call it a GA for our project; likewise, if an article passes at FAC, we call it an FA for our project. To take away those ratings seems... I don't know, but pretty unfair. BOZ ( talk) 22:56, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I think the discussion is moving away from separation of the scale into two, and instead focussing on establishing some sort of review board for A-Class. I'm coming to think this is a good idea, so that we can assess articles for their completeness. Unless anyone can see any flaws or another way? We don;t tend to catch completeness in our B-Class, do we, or when we send it to A-Class? Hiding T 12:55, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Ah, that sounds a lot more like Drilnoth's original idea, which I supported. BOZ ( talk) 13:46, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Just to say I had a quick read through and I support everything Hiding is saying.

It makes sense that, as an article pushes on from a B, the article is put out for assessment by the wider community but that doesn't make it a separate system it just makes sense to have the Project check for completeness and a broader review checks if the article meets a range of standards.

It does show we need to make more use of the A-class assessment and, as we are focusing on the improvement drive, perhaps we should automatically shoot for the A as soon as the GA is in. Most of the recent new GAs I've been involved can probably go for this immediately although there may be some articles that just sneak a GA which might need some more extensive work before going for this. FA is a big hoop to jump through and if we can get things to an A (where we look at completeness of coverage as well as structure) then it makes life easier on the final drive for FA (where could focus on exhausted the available resources and giving it a final polish for wording). ( Emperor ( talk) 15:13, 2 March 2009 (UTC))

My recommendation is to get a peer review anytime after a GA; do that, and we can call it an A, and then sometime thereafter we go for an FAC. BOZ ( talk) 20:22, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Okay, it's moving on. The idea to separate the scales would basically split the assessment tags we have on COMICSPROJ to four: the current importance, the current class tag which would be used only for A-C, Start & Stub, a new tag for wikiclass, which would be FA and GA, and a new tag for type; article, image, portal etc. I'm finding myself moving behind this idea, especially given the issues we had with Roy of the Rovers. It would allow us to assess the quality of our FA's and GA's and work out which ones were up to scratch. Suggestions on A-Class reviewing are to either run a review system in house, utilise peer review or buddy up with other projects. I'm not convinced we've got enough reviewers to keep it in house, so I'd favour either of the latter two, or a combination of both. One editor on a small project takes his articles to peer review once he feels they're A-Class and then notifies related projects to offer comments. So that might be a way forwards. Appreciate comments. Hiding T 10:17, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Fantastic Four

I think Fantastic Four is looking quite a bit better than where it was when we started. However, while some sections are very well sourced, some are barely sourced or not sourced at all. There are also at least two "citation needed" templates in there. The publication history has plenty of references, but it could use quite a few more. The supporting characters section has no sources. The other media section also has hardly any sources; unfortunately, this section is too small to split out as has been done with a few of the other really major character articles (I can pull some refs from Fantastic Four (film series) when I have a bit more time to work on it). Dig in, anywhere you like, or let me know where I can look to good sources. BOZ ( talk) 03:35, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Some of those sources I added had a lot more info. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 03:52, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

You mean the ones you added under the Critical reception section? Cool, I'll have a look - I'm done with WP for the night though. BOZ ( talk) 03:56, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm still not sure about the use of - it would be better to extract things like heavily used books to the reference section and then use a shorter reference, like "Wright (2002) p6" (and possible {{ ref}}/{{ note}} to link down to the book - which is a recommended referencing solution. See Silver Age of Comic Books as an example), as it leaves the page number and the reference together - unless you know what that template is doing and means (and it is far from clear - took me a while to work out what was going on) it can be pretty confusing. ( Emperor ( talk) 05:01, 26 February 2009 (UTC))

I think it up to one's preference. I used to always use the seperate references and notes sections (lke I did with Silver Age) because I hadn't seen the other one. The Template:rp one is pretty easy, which I why I like it. When you've got several books, each with several refs, then the seperate references and notes sections looks by far the best. When you've got only one book that has multiple pages used, I'm ambivalent, but lazy. I'm not even sure about page numbers anymore. A GA I passed was immedietely put up for review, and one thing that was changed, and didn't seem to faze anyone, was that the individual page citations were changed to one that said pp. 100-200 or something similar. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 05:14, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I'll try and get some reading done on the origins and get back to this next week. I'll trawl through my journals as well, I must have something on the FF in all of them. Hiding T 14:39, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I had a look in my John Byrne Modern Masters - it has two lines on the fantastic four! -- Cameron Scott ( talk) 14:43, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

You're joking! That's quite tragic. Byrne's run is a defining one, both for the book and for Byrne, it's probably where he was at his peak, and some of his storylines were quite important in terms of their impact on the characters. Hiding T 14:54, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

No kidding. :) Cameron, if the article isn't currently cited to that (and I doubt it is), could you see to it? BOZ ( talk) 16:05, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I'll take care of it later - there is a bit more than I thought. -- Cameron Scott ( talk) 16:06, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, that's actually a good thing then. No problem, take your time. Looks like momentum on the GA drive is picking up, so we are looking to have plenty of things to work on, so no rush on any one particular article. BOZ ( talk) 17:23, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Also check out the list I added to the talk page: Talk:Fantastic Four. If anyone can track down some of those resources (especially the Masters thesis, it might be available online if you have institutional access) as there is plenty of material out there (although some of it might not be that useful but we probably need to cross it off the list). It is looking solid though.

I'd also not completely rule out splitting off the "other media" section - as it is it has been trimmed back hard and a new article would give it more room to breath. ( Emperor ( talk) 03:59, 27 February 2009 (UTC))

I absolutely promise that I have every intention of checking out the sources you and Peregrine posted, but a combination of being very busy and easily distracted is really slowing me down. ;) All in good time, though... BOZ ( talk) 04:54, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Sooner or later, maybe tonight and maybe not... :) BOZ ( talk) 03:43, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I did a bit more work today, but this one still needs a bunch of sourcing work before it can be nominated. I'm satisfied that the article has been improved greatly, and even if we don't make it to GA with this one soon, I'm happy with what has been done. Like I say, we need better work with sourcing, and I'll point out where it is weakest. The Publication history is pretty well sourced and developed in the Origins and Early years sections, but the Character development section and on are pretty bare. The next section, "The team", is pretty good. Supporting characters doesn't have any more citations than the ones I added today. Cultural impact is well cited enough, but could use some more development; particularly in the 40 or so year gap between the book's debut and the first movie. :) And, In other media is a big section with almost no refs. So, if there's anywhere you can jump in and get some sourcing done, any little bit will help. :) BOZ ( talk) 01:30, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Cool, Peregrine Fisher's on the case. :) BOZ ( talk) 02:28, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

A vandalism report

I hope I am doing this right. Captain America's shield is being hit with some weird vandalism, someone who insists on changing the word 'shield' to frisbee. Happened twice at least. That is all. Lots42 ( talk) 21:27, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Seems to have died down. If it recurs, flag it up again. Hiding T 09:42, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Semi-retired?

OK, this really sucks, coming just as things were really getting going with getting more GA's for the project, but that's life sometimes. I was able to get a lot of things done at Wikipedia by doing a lot of my editing while I'm at work, but I got some news on Friday that should take most of that away. A new program has been installed on our computers which will track the exact amount of time that we spend on one program or another, meaning I will no longer be able to spend an hour (or more) each day of non-break time screwing around on non-work related things such as Wikpedia. ;) Taking away my ability to choose wrongdoing should force me to focus on work, as I should have been doing in the first place. :) Ah, America, the newest Communist state, with our police camera boxes and traffic light cameras on more and more corners all the time, and Big Brother tightening his grip - but, I digress. ;)

So, what does this mean for me? Well, no more half-hour Wikipedia editing sprees, no more staying late for an hour to spend time on the internet, or even doing major work on articles in MS Word (because that's being tracked too). I can't do as much as I currently do just from wokring at home, so I will have to cut back. This especially effects my work on GA's, so I probably won't be able to do the amount of work that I did to get articles like Gary Gygax, Wizards of the Coast, Forgotten Realms, or Spider-Man promoted. I can still help to coordinate efforts on the GA front, do copyediting and other minor stuff to help, and other things. I just won't have huge gobs of available time to do big batches of work or checking on things like I have been. I'll likely have to cut back on the watchlists I keep track of. I may have to cut back even more than I'm expecting, or I could be overreacting on just how much I'll have to cut down. I'll still have the same amount of free time (presumably) at home, and I'm still free to do as I please in the 10 minutes or so when I first get to work, and my two 15-minute breaks (and sometimes lunch), and a much shorter time after work. It may lead me to eventually give up on Wikepdia entirely, or I may just need to be more productive with the time I do use. We'll see; I'm not going anywhere any time soon, but I guess my point is just that I wanted to say my time will unfortunately be much more limited. BOZ ( talk) 19:59, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

If you can do any cheerleading at all on the GA front that would help me stay motivated, believe me. But whatever you can do is great. And if that means nothing at all, it's been a pleasure "knowing" you. Hiding T 21:25, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, I will absolutely keep that up at least. It's rewarding just to know I've got a place in keeping things moving along. And there will be times that I can and will find time to put in a lot of work on stuff, just not as often as I've become accustomed to. BOZ ( talk) 21:32, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry to hear this but, hopefully, your good work has rubbed off on us a little ;)

I suspect what you'll do is find yourself prioritising what you do rather than cutting things out completely as I suspect an awful lot of us do rather minor housekeeping editing too that we could probably cut out and it would get done. After all, our editing evolves over the years but then again so do the articles - we are really doing well making sure articles have infoboxes and ratings and the next big move is on to pushing the articles on to higher quality, so if you only have five minutes free ever day or so a little cheerleading might be just what we need.

Don't be a stranger. ( Emperor ( talk) 02:03, 1 March 2009 (UTC))

What might help is if we centralise the improvement effort somewhere so everything is more focused. I'll have a think on this (all suggestions are appreciated). ( Emperor ( talk) 02:05, 1 March 2009 (UTC))

You can count on a minimum of five minutes from me daily. :) Your assessment sounds pretty accurate, and I won't be any stranger than I already am. :) I think centralizing the improvement effort is a good idea, so long as moving the conversation doesn't marginalize it to those already working on it (that will kill the momentum quicker than anything). BOZ ( talk) 04:32, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I'd prefer to keep the discussion here, if we can, maybe under one dedicated section though. Like BOZ, I worry the conversation might get marginalised if it gets moved. Not only that, there's more likelihood of people chipping in if we keep it here. Hiding T 13:03, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Well I was thinking we can keep the discussion of the individual GA nominations and any other improvement drives we are currently running here but we do need somewhere that we can kick around ideas about what to do next (and maintain a list?) that isn't going to be archived and/or take over the notice board - the discussion here is already large and if we kept it rolling for months on end could swamp the talk page here. ( Emperor ( talk) 16:12, 3 March 2009 (UTC))

Hmmm. We could hand-archive? But a list probably should be built somewhere else, yeah. Hiding T 17:16, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Which is why I brought up the idea for a sandbox page previously. :) Or a subpage of some sort, like I made when the 0.7 nominations were going around. BOZ ( talk) 18:08, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I think this is the best place for visibility. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 18:33, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes a sub-page like that was what I was thinking of - to hold the general discussion even if we run the specific ones here while the improvement drive is on. ( Emperor ( talk) 21:39, 3 March 2009 (UTC))

We could re-activate the old collaboration page? Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics/Collaboration. We don't have to use it the way it was used, but there's framework there that could be of use? Also, This spurred me into thinking... see new section below. Hiding T 10:49, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Red Hulk would probably be pretty easy to get to GA. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 21:54, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Is that an offer? ;) BOZ ( talk) 23:14, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Maybe. ;-) I just did some work on it. We'll see where it goes. Too tell the truth, it probably has all the info it needs for GA right now, but it needs to be chopped up and rearranged, and then a lead written. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 01:32, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Hey, sounds good to me! BOZ ( talk) 03:52, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

One thing that would be nice for it is someone who's read it to expand or copyedit the plot. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 04:00, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I'll have a read through and see if I can do anything on structure and referencing. ( Emperor ( talk) 23:20, 4 March 2009 (UTC))

Willie Gillis

Does Willie Gillis count as a comics article?-- TonyTheTiger ( t/ c/ bio/ WP:CHICAGO/ WP:LOTM) 08:06, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Looks to be in the gray area, doesn't it. Hiding T 09:40, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
- Well. Do you want it tagged for this project or not?-- TonyTheTiger ( t/ c/ bio/ WP:CHICAGO/ WP:LOTM) 18:11, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
  - I would say no, personally. Rockwell's works weren't really comics. Nutiketaiel ( talk) 18:13, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
  - I know nothing about the subject but there is nothing in the article or the categorisation which supports such an inclusion so I'd say no - the visual arts project should suffice. ( Emperor ( talk) 20:11, 5 March 2009 (UTC))

List of modern day tricksters

Talk:List of modern day tricksters

Though it doesn't have a project banner (yet), there's plenty of comics and animation examples.

Anyway, we may be starting to come to an impasse, and I'd like to request comment from others. - jc37 10:10, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Alex Raymond GA

I've nominated Alex Raymond for GA review, so if we could get a few more eyes on it to check for typos, anything that could be tweaked for easier reading, whether the information is presented for a non-expert to grasp, etc.

It has certainly come a long way in the last two months [7] so thanks to everyone who has pitched in. ( Emperor ( talk) 21:54, 5 March 2009 (UTC))

Peanuts

I noticed that Peanuts was one of those listed above.

I'd be happy to collaborate, but to be honest, I'm not certain where to begin. My recollection of the GA process last time, leaves me with a sense of mixed messages as to the expectation for "passing" the review.

Any help welcome. - jc37 18:26, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Boz and Peregrine Fisher are the best people to ask about what you need for a GA. I tend to hector the reviewers too much, but I am happy to lend a hand on Peanuts. I'm sure Boz wouldn't mind running an eye over the article for suggestions on what to do, and Emperor is usually pretty handy with the fact tags. :) Hiding T 19:24, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

~waves~ I feel like I'm getting my eye in more for the GAs and while there are a number of hoops to jump through [8] (worth keeping an eye out for WP:WAF) but the key ones are the basics like making sure it is properly copy edited and you've got a good range of references backing up the statements. With a few editors doing a thorough read through it should be possible to sort out any problems with the text and highlight things that need referencing (it might help to do a thorough search through Google Books and Scholar as some reviewers like to see print sources as well as web pages, although this will vary with article. It does also mean you can cherrypick the good stuff for the GA and then work through the sources as you progress to FA). Obviously something more esoteric might crop up but I think if you have the bases covered it is likely any other problems will be spotted and you can deal with them if they crop up. It isn't a big deal but you do need the input of other editors to read through and check everything, hence the need for the collective effort.

So the best thing is, post a note saying you are pushing ahead and asking for people to read through, adjust any wording they find is awkward, flag anything that needs referencing and if there are any problems (sections needing clarification, a gap in the coverage or anything else) and, unless something major crops up, you can probably get the ball rolling in a few days. ( Emperor ( talk) 00:36, 23 February 2009 (UTC))

Heya. :) I'm good mostly for little stuff, or for doing grunt work if someone can set me up in the right direction. Peregrine can really work some magic with finding sources; you should see him go on D&D articles! Here's the secret about GA's: they're not as hard as you may think! Some do require some work, but a GA is nowhere near as hard to get as an FA. Getting a GA is comparable to graduating high school, as an FA is comparable to earning a PhD. ;) The main trick is to make sure you have good sourcing (which is where having someone like PF around really helps), that each paragraph has at least one source as well as every non-obvious statement, and that your independent sources outnumber your primary sources. Like Emperor says, a good copyediting for clarity is also a must, as is making sure you have a proper lead section and that your other sections are all in a row. And when working on fictional elements such as characters, you do need more than just a plot summary (though I strongly feel a well-written, complete-yet-concise plot summary is a must-have); development notes from the creators, a publication history, notes on the character's reception, etc, are critical. But once you've got all those ducks in a row, it's practically easy to get that GA. Here's the thing; right now we're at 60 GAs for this project (2 are As if you are looking). There's no reason we can't be well over 100 by the summer, and well on the way to 200 by the end of the year, if we have dedicated editors who are willing to keep up the work. I started a similar run on the D&D project a few months ago; right now, we are at 12, and 8 of those came in since we started up. That's with three dedicated editors (me, PF, and Drilnoth) and occasional help from others, so just imagine what we could do here if we have half a dozen or more dedicated editors working hard. Then, as I said somewhere above, we'll have quite a nice stable of GAs, and like Emperor says we can cherrypick from those to get more FAs as well.

But, stepping down from my soapbox... ;) I digress. Peanuts is an excellent choice, and most deserving of some love and attention. I had committed myself to gettins some work in on Fantastic Four, which i will do my best to get to tonight, and then during this week I'll have a look at Charlie Brown and crew (my wife is a Peanuts fan, so maybe I can even recruit some help from her for a change!) BOZ ( talk) 02:23, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Now, as regards the Peanuts article, there was a prior GAN; this was in the days before there was a proper separate review page, so start here and read up through the "Failed GA" section. While you're at it, also see the peer review which was done several months later. It's a good bet that any unresolved issues from either of those will still be a stumbling block for the next GAN, so might as well get to work on those before nominating. BOZ ( talk) 04:53, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

This is still on my to-do list... BOZ ( talk) 07:16, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Improvement drive

One thing to bear in mind: We will need to expand the scope of the improvement drive to cover other quality articles otherwise we are going to go through the current possibles and start to loose momentum. It should be fairly easy to target articles at the various grades which need improvement and then there will always be more becoming available for GA nomination (and beyond). Obviously this harks back to the suggested list of 300 important articles (with an eye to having a large set of articles we can propose for Wikipedia 1.0) but can extend to pretty much anything people feel could do with a polish (after all it is often a matter of interest/effort and an enthusiastic and knowledgeable editor can easily drive just about any article to a B but they probably will need some input to move it on, as they often need a subjective eye cast over things at the very least). ( Emperor ( talk) 05:49, 23 February 2009 (UTC))

Well, for starters, you can scroll up a bit to where I posted this; those are some less-than-B's that definitely are deserving subjects. :) BOZ ( talk) 04:47, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes I was thinking of something like the larger Wikipedia 0.7 list, plus some of the suggestions for additions to the list that weren't incorporated plus the list of links you provide here. That should get us to 200ish. We can then break it down by class and pick a couple of each to be part of a rolling focus to drive improvement. Then open the door to people suggesting additions to the list or other items that seem suitable for improvement. ( Emperor ( talk) 15:00, 24 February 2009 (UTC))

Sounds good. I don't want to overburden the project by saying "hey, let's fix these 200 articles right away", but we'll definitely keep referencing that for ideas on what to do, either when we run out of good B's to work on (or as we work on those). BOZ ( talk) 15:15, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Oh no, that wasn't my plan - this is separate from, but connected to, the improvement drive. What I wanted to do was draw up a long list of possible Wikipedia 1.0 candidates, we can then throw some of the ones that need more work into the improvement drive so that we are gradually raising the standard of those articles and we'll be in a good position when Wikipedia 1.0 comes around. I want to leave the improvement drive open to other nominations as there are obviously going to be articles with less broad importance which also need work. My broader point was that we do need to also be targeting stubs, stars and Cs so that there is always new material moving up that can then be in a good position for GA nomination. ( Emperor ( talk) 16:24, 24 February 2009 (UTC))

Sounds good. I have some other stuff to work on for now, but I'd be intersted in kicking off a list like that. BOZ ( talk) 16:59, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm a tad busy at present, but I'd be interested in pulling a list together. It'd be great of we could get an ordered list, so that when we finish one we can move on to the next pretty fluently. Maybe we could add the list into the project task-board the way we did that article alerts. Hiding T 14:37, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Maybe a sandbox page to start building a list? We could begin by pulling from here. BOZ ( talk) 16:02, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Do you mean we could somehow automate a list? If so that could be interesting. If there was some way we could either have some way for a robot to monitor class and importance and generate a list of the... 300 (although the actual number might be less than this). Would it also be possible to somehow flag this on the talk page header? Also have a field to show it is currently part of the active focus? Some of that might not be possible but it'd be something to shoot for. ( Emperor ( talk) 15:23, 27 February 2009 (UTC))

No, I definitely don't mean it should be automated. :) Definitely hand-picked, and preferrably agreed upon for the most part. BOZ ( talk) 16:12, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry the automated bit was monitoring class/importance - you'd have to feed the articles in by hand (presumably by introducing a special tag on the talk page header). Then as the assessments change the robot can keep the list updated. It would allow us to spot anything in need of urgent work (a high importance article of start quality perhaps). ( Emperor ( talk) 20:04, 27 February 2009 (UTC))

Project momentum

In trying to keep the momentum going, I had a couple of thoughts. I've suggested utilising Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics/Collaboration in some for or other for the improvement drive, even if it is just to hold the list of articles we're targeting. That's probably the best idea for it, it died a death last time due to lack of impetus so it's better not to be so grandiose this time around, I think. Also, I think it might be worth culling the list of project members, weeding out people who haven't contributed to Wikipedia in a while to an inactive list. That would lead onto the idea of assembling a project newsletter, where we could just update people on what's happening, you know, promoted articles, key discussions, that sort of thing. We could send it to all active members, with an opt in for new issues. Hopefully that would keep us motivated. Thoughts? Hiding T 10:55, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I think those are great ideas.

As for membership, other Projects I've been active in use a sort of a "Ok, who's still here" signup on the project talk page.

Though honestly in our case, I think we might be better off deciding on a set of criteria for "active".

So let's say:

Active = Edited a comics-related article in the last 2 months

We can make the time length longer, but really, it's not like someone can't come back from wikibreak and say, I'm back, and be "active" again...

Sound good? - jc37 11:41, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I was thinking more of people who hadn't edited Wikipedia for six months as the cut off, and then if we need to implementing a sign up of the rest, because we've got, well, the last count is over 425 members, and I know for sure two who haven't edited Wikipedia in a very long time. So it seems silly to slap 425 pages with a newsletter or sign up notice when there's no need. And I'd be wary of removing people from the project who haven't edited a comics article for two months. I don't think project membership should be viewed like that so much, and it seems silly removing people who might be supporters of our goal and who would have to re-add themselves next time they edit a comics article. I think there's a bot out there that might be able to do inactive people, I'll have to check. Thoughts? Hiding T 12:05, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

We're doing collaborations somewhat informally as it is, right now. BOZ ( talk) 13:38, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, that's what prompted me to offer up Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics/Collaboration, as either the place to sandbox that list we were discussing earlier, or for some other reason, if it is useful in anyway? Hiding T 14:51, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Hey everyone. I'm stopping by to see how I can help with the improvement of tennis articles. I'll take a look around, but let me know if there's anything specific going on right now. Alonsornunez ( talk) 13:54, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Also see: WP:CMC/ID and [9]. As mentioned above, a central area for discussing potential articles and somewhere for a list seem a good idea, even if we run the discussion on the individual articles improvement drive here.

On the newsletter - good idea. Perhaps have no cut-off but also an opt-out feature. It may be editors are working in other areas but could be tempted back in by a newsletter or it might just get an inactive editor interested again. ( Emperor ( talk) 15:10, 5 March 2009 (UTC))

I would be fine with a separate place for discussing specific collaborations, but we would need a way to keep traffic flowing there (i.e., posting notices here, posting notices on editor's talk pages who have edited that article, etc) or it will die off. BOZ ( talk) 16:05, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps something like the comics collaboration talk page header thingy, it could show current and past status as being the focus of an improvement drive. ( Emperor ( talk) 16:32, 5 March 2009 (UTC))

Which page do we want to pick to sandbox a list on then? I agree we should keep the discussion of articles currently being worked on here. WP:CMCC or WP:CMC/ID? I'll make a rough start in a newsletter then, yes? I'll mention all the news since January, like GA's, new members, that sort of thing. I'll also mention the collaboration drive, and are there any other discussions that merit discussion? Hiding T 12:55, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

B-Class

There's a sixth B-Class criteria, not sure when this was added but I missed it. Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment/B-Class criteria, basically means meeting Wikipedia:Make technical articles accessible. I'd guess we need to port this in, could get complicated though. Hiding T 11:03, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Well that probably doesn't really apply to strongly to us but making sure it is pitched for the general reader is something we are probably keeping an eye out for anyway (the amusing thing is the main complaint I've seen along these lines is that we are being too helpful specifying that the character is a fictional one). I'd say get a robot to add it as a pass but drop a note into the article and say that if someone feels it is failing this then flag it and: fix the problem or let us know asap. It is possible that the occasional article is failing this but I can't think of one I've assessed that would be seen as problematic. ( Emperor ( talk) 15:02, 5 March 2009 (UTC))

I think it probably applies the further into the maze we get. I scratch my head at times when reading something like Emotional spectrum. Hiding T 12:49, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I think we all do!! It should be merged into the power ring article, as it only makes sense in that context. ( Emperor ( talk) 14:06, 6 March 2009 (UTC))

Silver Age of Comic Books GA 2

The second GA review of Silver Age of Comic Books is at Talk:Silver Age of Comic Books/GA2. There's a fair bit needs doing by all accounts. Feel free to pitch in. Hiding T 12:47, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Good deal. BOZ ( talk) 13:50, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Pride & Joy GA 2

Pride & Joy (comics) is nominated for its second GA, but while the review is pending, it would be great if it had a couple extra eyes watching it and polishing it. Thanks in advance, -- A ^talk/_contribs 14:04, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Megatokyo

I nominated Megatokyo to be the Today's Featured Article here; so weigh in if you feel like. It's the oldest FA in the WikiProject Comics queue next to Roy of the Rovers, although it looks to be in far better shape than that article. :) BOZ ( talk) 02:38, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Can anyone fix the last "citation needed" under the Reception section? :) BOZ ( talk) 19:29, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Yep. :) Hiding T 21:22, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Danke! There is some mild support thus far, and no opposes, so hopefully we can get this one on the front page next (well, almost this) month! BOZ ( talk) 21:28, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Cool! Are we allowed to support? Hiding T 21:31, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I imagine so. I don't think they'd appreciate a bunch of editors from our project piling on support votes (which hasn't happened so far), but if you honestly in good faith believe that it should be front page material, then why not? BOZ ( talk) 21:38, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Good deal! This one will be the front page article for March 13. BOZ ( talk) 20:30, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Comics Alliance

Hi, I've from WP:VG and I'm working on Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron. The developer of the game is Rebellion Developments, which does some comic book work. I was wondering if anyone in the Comics WikiProject had run into the website comicsalliance.com and if so, if you consider it a reliable source? The interview I'd like to use for Renegade Squadron is here. Thoughts? — Levi van Tine ( t – c) 12:59, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't know the site but it looks to be OK if you want to use the interview. ( Emperor ( talk) 14:16, 8 March 2009 (UTC))

Maybe we could do some collaboration on comics-related VG articles; it worked well on Planescape: Torment. :) BOZ ( talk) 20:58, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

BOZ! You're everywhere. Ya I'm ready when you are, just let me know. — Levi van Tine ( t – c) 07:22, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Nah, just two places. :) I really haven't looked into comics-related VGs yet, so I'd have to give that some thought down the road. BOZ ( talk)

New York Times Graphic Books Bestseller Lists

This should prove a useful resource for reception sections [10] - splitting up hardcover, softcover and manga (although you'd think they might have been better going for OGN, trade and manga but I'm not complaining about the extra gloss of respectability this brings, and the extra sales it should produce) pulling in numbers from a huge range of outlets, which should provide a fairly accurate reflection of total sales. ( Emperor ( talk) 15:50, 8 March 2009 (UTC))

Writer succession boxes

These are really getting out of control on some articles. Jeph Loeb is a prime example - we have him listed as a writer on things he did a handful of issues on, and, in the case of Buffy, a one-off.

Can we please limit these to writers who had ongoing runs on titles? Say, 12 issues? As opposed to people who wrote fill-ins and single story arcs? And perhaps also to titles that have decently long runs? Say, 60 issues or more, and only include writers of 12 issues or more? (Move the numbers around as you see fit - the point is, some standards are necessary to prevent ridiculous proliferation of boxes). Phil Sandifer ( talk) 18:33, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Ouch...

2ish¢...

I'd bottom out a writers run at 6 issues since there are cases of writers taking/being given a book for one notable arc.

As for series length... 18 issues since that would allow for 1 or 2 significant hand offs.

Couple of other things though...

The secession boxes need to be weeded for reboot/relaunch/renaming. Frankly, the "Heroes Reborn" titles should not be part of the succession of writers working on a book. Nor should a succession box be constructed for something like Aquaman where there are multiple volumes with multi year gaps.
The 'box should also list the issue numbers, even if (especially if?) it presents "fill in" gaps.

- J Greb ( talk) 19:16, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Tricky one as they may have had an important role and also removing people from the succession causes the entire thing to fall apart. Not that I'm a huge fan of them, especially when they get out of control, but just excluding people is going to be a pain as you'd need to establish arbitrary criteria and then police them hard, as people following the links will try and restore the succession

Would a better idea to make {{ s-start}} collapsible? Or wrap something collapsible around large ones (as I did with footers at Jack Kirby). It may be a specific problem in comics as a succession of monarchs or prime ministers wouldn't lend itself to such craziness. ( Emperor ( talk) 19:22, 8 March 2009 (UTC))

Making it collapsable sounds like a good idea. I think you're right that people just re-add them if we remove them. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 19:43, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Julie Power

What does everyone think of this edit? 71.194.32.252 ( talk) 21:45, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

It has the whiff of WP:OR and WP:SYNTHESIS. As I've said before (on comics articles and Talk:Canon (fiction)) trying to define what is and isn't canon and spotting where "continuity errors" is more suitable for fan sites and message board discussion than an encyclopaedia. After all this is a sequential form of fiction usually with multiple creators and creative pressures so there will be variations in portrayal, equally it isn't done to someone else to define what is and isn't canon (or if there is even a canon - often it is only the fans who care that much about obscure points of continuity) except for the creators. Without someone official saying what is and isn't part of the officially accepted stories and/or explaining their thinking behind changes in character portrayal, this is just speculation. So we should try and avoid this kind of thing without secondary sources from the horse's mouth. ( Emperor ( talk) 23:49, 8 March 2009 (UTC))

Request for Assistance

Good afternoon, all. I am leaving this message here to inform you that I have rather unfortunately been forced to protect the article Characters of Watchmen due to vandalism. The block is set to expire in 24 hours, when it does, I fear the vandalism may restart. As the article is within your scope I am leaving this here to inform you of the problem, and to ask that a few good users keep tabs on the article for the next few days until the hit and run vandalism dies down. Thanks in advance. TomStar81 ( Talk) 23:24, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Mon-El

It seems that the character's been known as Mon-El longer than he's been known as Lar Gand. Plus, he's currently appearing as Mon-El. Should his article be moved to that name? -- DrBat ( talk) 14:39, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually, he's been known as Lar Gand longer.

Though Superboy named him Mon-El, because he (Mon-El) had a shaky grasp on his memory at the time, later in that same story, he remembered that his name was Lar Gand.

And for the last couple decades, they've been avoiding the Superboy problem and calling him Lar Gand, or other names like Valor or M'Onel, until rather recently returning to Mon-El.

With that confusion, I think Lar Gand is the best place for it.

And (as I've been reminded in the past - pokes Hiding) Redirects are cheap. So just have those other names point to Lar Gand (if they don't already...) - jc37 08:03, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

PDF versions

To paraphrase another editor at another page, the Wikipedia-to-PDF, and the agreement with PediaPress to produce "books on demand" is now apparently here. I'd like to ask the question here - how can we use this? I think that perhaps we should consider running through our articles to see whether we can compile a "book" of some of our best work, then offer it on the portals and WikiProject pages. The only danger is that there is no unifying theme. Would this be an appropriate way to go? Do others have better/other ideas? Eventually it would be nice if we could offer books which cover a number of topics, but that's going to take time. How about a Watchmen themed book:

Watchmen, Characters of Watchmen, Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, John Higgins (comics), Joe Orlando, Watchmen (film), Charlton Comics, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?, Tales of the Black Freighter (film), Alexander the Great, Mighty Crusaders, Dick Giordano, Graphic novel and Tachyon.

The only problem article from the above at cursory glance is Mighty Crusaders, although Tales of the Black Freighter (film) looks liek it might need some tlc too. If we got that worked up even a little, that'd be a great little book. Have I missed any articles that should be included there? Anyone want to get Mighty Crusaders into halfway decent shape? Hiding T 11:34, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

While that indeed sounds interesting, some fun would be to go through more than just the enWikipedia. I think there might be some interesting stuff at Wikinews, WIktionary, (and possibly even at Wikibooks) among other Wikimedia wikis. That said, where would such books be "hosted"? (I'm a little fuzzy on how this all works...) - jc37 11:43, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure how you get other projects into the mix, to be honest, I haven't had much of a play with it as yet. I'm not sure it has been enabled across al projects as we speak, but am prepared to accept I could be wrong on that count. At the minute I'm bashing away at Mighty Crusaders. Hiding T 11:58, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Note there is a merge discussion for Tales of the Black Freighter (film) here: Talk:Watchmen (film)#Black Freighter. I'll look around for more sources. ( Emperor ( talk) 18:29, 9 March 2009 (UTC))

It could be a good way of showing us what is important for getting a grasp of a specific subject and highlight what needs more work (problematic articles can be put into the improvement drive). So my thinking:

Comics - we could have something based on the articles we'd be improving with the idea of creating a pool of the core articles that we can draw on for our Wikipedia 1.0 nominations (mentioned above)
DC Comics - main article, predecessors, imprints, lists of titles and characters, important titles/characters
- It might also be possible to do something focused on Vertigo (DC Comics) as that has had some love (and we could focus on improving Sandman (Vertigo) - I know I have been planning a Hellblazer re-write for a while. Both would make good fodder for lower quality articles to be put through an improvement drive).
Marvel Comics - same as DC
What about something on regional comics? I assume the anime/manga project will be doing something but perhaps something on Franco-Belgian comics? It'd be interesting to have one on British comics but the quality is pretty low for a lot of the key titles.

I think a Watchmen one would be a good idea and you couldn't ask for a better time than now so I say go for that as a proof-of-concept. I'll see what I can do about the John Higgins article - he is interviewed in the current Judge Dredd Megazine so I'll look into picking that up (although I know the interviewer so I might see if he can just send me that). Also note there are a lot of Dave Gibbons interview on the article and now might be the time to integrate them (I'll go through Thrill Power Overload and dig out what I can. Perhaps this might be a good idea to throw that article into an improvement drive - it should be easy enough to get it to a B and drive on to GA. ( Emperor ( talk) 16:23, 9 March 2009 (UTC))

Motion comic

It struck me we needed "something" on this so I started a section at Comics vocabulary but there seems to be a lot of interest at the moment [11] especially given the Watchmen Motion Comic so I assume there is plenty of potential for a full article - this is just getting the ball rolling. ( Emperor ( talk) 18:23, 9 March 2009 (UTC))

Emma Frost

Got another silly edit war brewing... 204.153.84.10 ( talk) 17:27, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

User:Lithon

Special:Contributions/Lithon - Anyone with super-admin powers want to have a "chat" with this guy? BOZ ( talk) 01:49, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Well you don't need super-admin powers to dish out a warning. The edits seem oddly similar to this [12] so worth keeping an eye out. ( Emperor ( talk) 15:26, 11 March 2009 (UTC))

I had a chat. Hiding T 10:12, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Bane

The review has begun. BOZ ( talk) 22:22, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Project banner

Hi! I was wondering if this project would like to have its WikiProject banner (({{ Comicsproj}}) converted to use {{ WPBannerMeta}}, which would allow for easier updates and modifications to it. I believe that most, if not all, of the banner's current functionality can be duplicated using the meta-template, and it would be more inline with the appearance and formatting of other project banners. I thought I'd ask here rather than at the banner's talk page, as I thought that this might receive more of a response.

The only major change to functionality than I can see would be that converting to WPBannerMeta would add in a 6th criteria for B-Class assessments, which is listed at your assessments page but not currently included in the banner.

If this change is wanted, I'll start working on it in a user sandbox and make sure that it is thoroughly tested to avoid having any bugs before making an editprotected request to change the template itself. – Drilnoth ( T • C) 17:24, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

It's something I've considered doing, but like you I don't think all of the current functionality can be converted across, and it's all pretty useful for tracking articles and the like. As for the B-Class anomaly, we've discussed the sixth B-Class criteria, and although it's something we likely will add, it's not something we're in a hurry to do as yet. It's not something we think has a great impact on us at this minute. At the minute I'm sandboxing a new version to get some of the tweaks Milhist have. I'm kind of happy going it alone because it means we get to forge our own way and have the ability to adapt the banner to our own purposes, but I'm open to discussion and input on it. Hiding T 10:19, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
- Okay; I just thought I'd ask, especially since there is a new hook that allows the quality-by-importance intersection cats. – Drilnoth ( T • C) 14:27, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
  - No problem. I freely admit Comicsproj is just hack piled onto hack piled onto hack, and probably outdated and really bad code. But I kind of see it the way mechanics see an old engine. I appreciate I'm being a little guilty of WP:OWN, so I'm open to input from the rest of the project. If they think your idea is a winner, I won't get in the way. I just feel that a meta-banner can never really offer the functionality that a projects own banner can. Hiding T 14:45, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Drilnoth, would you be willing to work up a sandbox version anyway (knowing that it's still possible that we wouldn't adopt it)?

Being able to see what the differences and similarities are might be helpful. - jc37 20:15, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

We're already over the limit for the number of taskforces we could have. I haven't fully explored {{ WPBannerMeta/hooks/cats}}, so I can't tell if it would support categorising if two parameters are listed; my initial reaction is that it won't, but I've been known to be wrong before. I suppose you could nest... I don't know. Hiding T 11:02, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
- Sorry about the delay in responding! I'll come up with a sandbox version (hopefully sometime this week) and let you know how much functionality I can translate. – Drilnoth ( T • C) 02:02, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Article alerts

This is a notice to let you know about Article alerts, a fully-automated subscription-based news delivery system designed to notify WikiProjects and Taskforces when articles are entering Articles for deletion, Requests for comment, Peer review and other workflows ( full list). The reports are updated on a daily basis, and provide brief summaries of what happened, with relevant links to discussion or results when possible. A certain degree of customization is available; WikiProjects and Taskforces can choose which workflows to include, have individual reports generated for each workflow, have deletion discussion transcluded on the reports, and so on. An example of a customized report can be found here.

If you are already subscribed to Article Alerts, it is now easier to report bugs and request new features. We are also in the process of implementing a "news system", which would let projects know about ongoing discussions on a wikipedia-wide level, and other things of interest. The developers also note that some subscribing WikiProjects and Taskforces use the display=none parameter, but forget to give a link to their alert page. Your alert page should be located at "Wikipedia:PROJECT-OR-TASKFORCE-HOMEPAGE/Article alerts". Questions and feedback should be left at Wikipedia talk:Article alerts.

Message sent by User:Addbot to all active wiki projects per request, Comments on the message and bot are welcome here.

Thanks. — Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 08:59, 15 March, 2009 (UTC)

Thank you.

At the moment, trying to decide how best to implement.

For one thing, still wondering if anyone else cares about archiving, see the thread further up this page.

For another, if we do, we then may need to find a bot for automatic archival.

All of this presuming that we integrate this into the noticeboard... - jc37 02:44, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Winnie Winkle

This article is also now being reviewed. :) BOZ ( talk) 22:25, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Can anyone with some time on their hands take a look at this review before it gets closed out as a fail? BOZ ( talk) 03:30, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Hulk

Just want some outside eyes - anyone see any problems with those additions? surely this is the sort of content we want in our articles? The sources look good and as far as I can determine, all of the quotes are correct. -- Cameron Scott ( talk) 11:37, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I tried to add this at one point; he said it was plaigarism (I had copied it from another article, so I did not check it first and he may be right), but moreover he indicated that (unlike the other articles we are trying to get to GA) that this article doesn't need an "impact" section because that sort of information is spread throughout the article. Therefore, I've taken it off my personal list of articles to get to GA, as I have with any other OWNed articles. No sense in battling someone when it's much easier to work together. BOZ ( talk) 12:54, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

According to ThuranX, the precedent seems to be a GA review where it was said it should all be in one section.

However, the GA review wasn't done right and contested leading to a lot of back and forth (see this section and the ones after it)

The only thing that might be being referred to is one comment on the re-assessment "And perhaps the editors could combine the final three stubby sections to avoid MoS concerns." [13]

So basically I see no justification for this claim and the section makes sense there and seems well-written and properly sourced. I might quibble about the need for a sub-heading on Frankenstein but personally I feel it should stay where it is unless someone does flag it as a big problem during a future GA (a proper one as this article has yet to have had one).

Of course, what this highlights are the big underlying problems with that page and ongoing spats and ownership issues are what is holding this article back from progressing to a point where it would make an easy GA nomination - if you have to fight to keep even good edits in progress will be sluggish at best. Perhaps we need to address that problem so the article can be brought up to the quality it deserves. ( Emperor ( talk) 17:58, 16 March 2009 (UTC))

Nail on the head. I seem to remember Thuran getting very upset about the article when David Fuchs questioned the GA status that Thuran had worked it up to, and Thuran then went on to insist that if David says it's not a GA then it must be a GA and all sorts of other dramatics. BOZ ( talk) 19:31, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Well I've seen it all now - it seems direct quotes from the creator in reliable sources represent WP:SYTH. em.. yeah.. -- Cameron Scott ( talk) 22:14, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Can we get another evaluation on it as it currently stands so we can use that as a basis to take it to GA status? -- Cameron Scott ( talk) 22:21, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I've left my comments on the talk page [14] but basically that last version of yours is fine by me. ( Emperor ( talk) 01:01, 17 March 2009 (UTC))

Silver Age of Comic Books GA

Silver Age of Comic Books passed its GA review. Great work to everyone who pitched in, especially Peregrine Fisher who went lead on this one.

I also think this gives us a good blueprint for improving the others. As mentioned above [15] we probably want to aim to get all the ages of comic boos up to at least a B by the time we hit Wikipedia 1.0 and there are some problems with the Silver Age article avoided, like subjective lists which are just a magnet for people adding their own favourites. We could probably just remove the lot and make sure the important creators and titles are mentioned in the main body of the text and if someone can come up with an authoritative list of titles then we could look into adding something like the one on the Silver Age [16].

As I said I'll start sections on the talk pages so we can assemble resources and work on some copy editing. ( Emperor ( talk) 01:18, 17 March 2009 (UTC))

The Overstreet price guide has a list of the 100(!) top golden age comics. We could grab a top 20 from there. Unfortunately, I don't own a recent version of the price guide. I think it even has several pages of discussion in addition to the list. Anyone have the book? - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 01:30, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good, and yes 20 is about right.

It is the lists at Bronze Age of Comic Books and Modern Age of Comic Books, which cause me concern so if anyone can help out with something similar for those, then that'd be really useful. Equally neither the Silver or Golden Age articles have timelines and, again, I wonder if they are necessary and this isn't better covered in the article. ( Emperor ( talk) 02:08, 17 March 2009 (UTC))

I'm busy for the next week or so, but I just dug out a big box of old Wizard magazines from circa early 90s to roughly 2002. If there are any issue numbers you want me to keep an eye out for, keep me posted. :) BOZ ( talk) 03:27, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Superhero team article

I believe there should be an article of superhero teams. Teams are a major element of superhero comics, and I am surprised that the topic is not already covered. Any thoughts on organizing the creation of such an article.-- Marcus Brute ( talk) 06:40, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

I would start by looking around for some good sources. Silver Age of Comic Books already has some pretty good ones about the JLA and FF. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 07:49, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Dan Cooper

Not sure if anyone is up for it but Dan Cooper (comics) is getting some heat because of the D.B. Cooper link the FBI have made (see Comic Book Urban Legends). Seems like a good time to get it moving and I'll keep an eye open for sources. ( Emperor ( talk) 23:46, 20 March 2009 (UTC))

Alex Raymond GA

OK reviewed and passed. The lack of any need for quick edits is a testament to the hard work everyone put in (I can say this as my contribution was minimal). Especially heartening as it was not much beyond a stub at the start of the year [17] - which shows what can be done. Great work all round and I'll start a section about pushing on - this can go all the way but will need some effort on the push to FA. ( Emperor ( talk) 01:00, 21 March 2009 (UTC))

Awesome stuff! :) BOZ ( talk) 02:54, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Other Green Goblins

I just spotted this in my watchlist:

(Move log); 23:46 . . DrBat (Talk | contribs | block) moved Other Goblins to Green Goblin (disambig)

Now that isn't a correct disambiguation phrase and the article isn't a disambiguation article so it'd be wrong in the expanded form. But it does raise the problem with Green Goblin that I raised on the talk page. I'm unsure how exactly to address it though.

The most obvious solution would be to move Green Goblin to Norman Osborn (or "Green Goblin (Norman Osborn), although he has used other aliases and is currently going by Iron Patriot as well as just plain Norman Osborn) and then swing the other Goblins article into the top slot (as a longer form of set index, as we have at Ant-Man, Black Knight (comics), Spider-Woman, Captain Marvel (Marvel Comics), Marvel Boy, etc.). This might be controversial and would certainly require an awful lot of work updating incoming links, so is not something you'd want to do without a consensus (as you'd not want all that hard work reversed).

Another might be to trim things down and merge it back into Green Goblin but it is always going o be squeezed for space.

Any other ideas? ( Emperor ( talk) 20:41, 27 February 2009 (UTC))

Thoughts...

There is precedent for characters that have a major connection to a codename as well as minor runs with other codenames using the alter ego: Alan Scott, Hal Jordan. Just as there are those for the flip side: Captain America.
Cap also shows another way to handle it with Alternate versions of Captain America#Modern continuity filling in for a set index.
DrBat's solution sort of fits similar instances where there is one all-but-dead-sure-always-wanted article among many. It may be that the suffix needs to be changed.
Merging the set index back into the Normie article wouldn't be a good fit given the tone and length of the article.

I'd be tempted to slide the SI into Green Goblin (set index), (other), or (alternate characters) and leave Normie alone.

On a side note, this gives a reasonable way to split Alternate versions of Captain America, since that first section really should be a SI.

- J Greb ( talk) 01:13, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I like your last option because, as you say, it could also solve similar problems (there could be others too - are there other Spider-Man's as well as Spider-Man (Gerry Drew)?). ( Emperor ( talk) 16:35, 28 February 2009 (UTC))

Ben Reilly and Spider-Man 2099... So there is a small one there too. - J Greb ( talk)

Now "(disambig)" is just a horrible disambiguator. Green Goblin (comics) is a much better one. Why not just turn it into a set index article like the rest of these? Lord Sesshomaru ( talk • edits) 03:32, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

It is an odd shortening of (disambiguation), but that is valid for a first level dab page.

Looking at the cat you point to... not all of them are dabbed "(comics)" and it looks like most of those that are are secondary dabs. - J Greb ( talk) 05:00, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Still, I'm sure there's something better than "(disambig)" out there. May as well ask the folks at WT:WPDAB for their ideas if no one comes up with anything. Lord Sesshomaru ( talk • edits) 05:09, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm good with "(set index)" it won't work in situations with common words but works here.

Also along these lines see Talk:Ms. Marvel#Multiple Ms. Marvels? - the solution for Green Goblin would also apply there too. ( Emperor ( talk) 04:37, 7 March 2009 (UTC))

Given that whatever happens "(disambig)" is wrong, how about we move it to Green Goblin (set index) and start Captain America (set index) (as it seems a solution to a problem), with an eye on Ms. Marvel (set index), we can then sort out the niceties later. ( Emperor ( talk) 02:52, 12 March 2009 (UTC))

Any more thoughts on this? I think it is worth doing at least for a short to medium term fix. ( Emperor ( talk) 20:06, 17 March 2009 (UTC))

I haven't been following this really, but (set index) doesn't sound like a good disambig phrase to me. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 20:25, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, just stick with "(comics)" right? There are precedents after all. Lord Sesshomaru ( talk • edits) 22:29, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

The problem is, as noted above Green Goblin (comics) and Captain American (comics) should redirect to the main articles as they are with Superman (comics) and Batman (comics), as that is the precedent for those. Unless we have a consensus to use these for set indexes - I would tend to support this as there are other people who have used the Batman alias - very appropriate at the moment given his "death" and the Battle for the Cowl. It wouldn't cause any confusion as you'd have the Batman link in the top line. However, this doesn't address where the name is already disambiguated (like for example Hulk (comics)) so we might just end up back here having this discussion again. ( Emperor ( talk) 16:10, 23 March 2009 (UTC))

I don't see any reason to remove content and when a set index focuses on characters of the same name within one company then it makes sense to expand it as in the examples I give in my first post (in fact I am unsure what everyone thinks some cross company ones have been expanded, like Thor (comics), so it might be we can take a number of suitable set indexes from sub-disambiguation to a fuller article). I am also unsure "(comics)" would work, as that should be redirected to the main article (as with Superman (comics) and Batman (comics). ( Emperor ( talk) 05:23, 1 March 2009 (UTC))

AfD of a comics creator article

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brian Giovannini

I'm not sure what to make of the article, and would like to hear from others... - jc37 10:49, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

I did have a look around and couldn't find anything on them. As you say a lack of online presence isn't necessarily deletable but the complete lack of any sources in the article does seem a problem. ( Emperor ( talk) 15:13, 21 March 2009 (UTC))

We might also want to have a look at some other comics creators with the notability template on them: Bill Vallely, David Füleki, Edward Berridge, Tom Kerr, Ananth Panagariya, Jim Caron, Lela Dowling, Mohammad Haque, Snaggy, Igor Goldkind, Bill Schanes, Jules Faber, Mort Lawrence, Jennifer Diane Reitz, Kim Jae-hwan, Martin Wagner (artist), Sal Regla, Tom Spurgeon, Michael Carroll (author), Tom Williams (artist), David Willis (cartoonist), Klebs junior, Dan Norton, Ed Clayton, Logan (illustrator), Lore Sjöberg, and Kevin Cannon. BOZ ( talk) 02:56, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Just on a perusal of that list and without reference to the articles, I'd vouch for Igor Goldkind, Tom Spurgeon, Martin Wagner (artist) and Bill Schanes. Goldkind will pop up in UK press articles from the late 1980s early 1990s, Spurgeon is a published author, a reliable source in the field, and regarded thinker, and former editor of and contributor to TCJ so sources will exist. Martin Wagner was recently embroiled in controversy over a subscription program he ran back in the late 1980s or early 1990s, and Hepcats was quite an important alt comic of the era, so again, sources are out there. Sources for Bill Schanes and Wagner will likely be older TCJ and TCBG. I have the former, not the latter. They're all notable, they're all sourceable, and they all jumped out at me. The only issue is that the sources will be print based rather than online, and are going to be 20 years old now. The rest I am unsure of just by glancing at them. Hiding T 11:53, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

I think the rest we're going to have to look at potential for merging. Mort Lawrence is someone who leaps out at me as notable, but proving that would be hard. But if we look at listifying creators working in the industry, that may be a way forwards. Hiding T 12:00, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

I think most of those can go and general agree with the list of those that are probably OK. One concern is that some are from non-English speaking countries and the sources might just not be available for us. However, if so there should be an interwiki link to their home language Wikipedia and if they can't find enough material for an article then this might be a bad sign. I am unsure how useful a list of comics creators would be as it would be pretty indiscriminate and could get loaded down with people adding themselves even if their comic has only been seen by them, two friends and their dog. ( Emperor ( talk) 16:16, 23 March 2009 (UTC))

Klebs junior has a page on Lambiek Comiclopedia, so is probably barely allright (also mentioned e.g. here. However, the (older) Lambiek page and our article are very similar, so either our article is copied and very slightly rewritten from Lambiek, or they have a common source. Needs checking and perhaps deleting for copyright violation. Fram ( talk) 12:05, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Stoshmaster does a lot of work on comics creators articles, but he wasn't familiar with any of these, so I figured I'd mention them here. :) BOZ ( talk) 00:46, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Loony Bin Jim

Loony Bin Jim Is he really considered a notable badguy for the pubisher? enough to be added to his navigation template? -- Cameron Scott ( talk) 18:36, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Pubisher? who the hell is the pubisher? -- Cameron Scott ( talk) 18:40, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

No one - he is a character from the film Punisher: War Zone. I definitely don't think he should be in the footer and I can't see any reason this can't just be redirected to the film article. ( Emperor ( talk) 19:33, 23 March 2009 (UTC))

_{Heh, my second comment was in reference to my typo in the first. --
Cameron Scott (
talk) 20:06, 23 March 2009 (UTC)}

2¢

If it's just a character in the one film, then I'd say punt it from the navbox.

And if there's nothing more than "We've got an expansion of the plot here" in the article, redirect it... or put it up for AfD w/ redirect as the preferred out come (see Meridian Chase...)

- J Greb ( talk) 22:57, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

_{Ah. Silly me. The pubisher is a bit like the Easter Bunny or Santa but they visit you only once when... you put your first foot on the road to adulthood. Hope that helps. (
Emperor (
talk) 00:24, 24 March 2009 (UTC))}

Winnie Winkle GA review

The GA review for Winnie Winkle has been posted a few days ago, and the article needs some work to get it to pass (which seems certainly possible). All help is welcome, certainly for the finer nuances of the English language, and for perhaps some extra (offline) sources. I'll try to go over it as well, but I don't think I can solve the issues on my own. Fram ( talk) 13:40, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

I have tried to tackle most issues raised in the GA review, but there are a few I don't know how to correct, and I would appreciate somene going through the article and improving it further (not the sourcing or so, but the writing, to change it from decent English into truly fluent prose). I think that with a bit of work this will be yet another GA for our project! Fram ( talk) 09:15, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

I've had a read through and can't spot any obvious problems with the text. I'll take another run at it when I'm fresher. ( Emperor ( talk) 02:16, 19 March 2009 (UTC))

My busy-ness has reached critical mass, but I hope to have things back to normal within a few days. ;) BOZ ( talk) 07:50, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Looks like the main issue is with the images - perhaps someone with a good eye for this could look them over and see what can be done. ( Emperor ( talk) 23:49, 20 March 2009 (UTC))

Winnie Winkle is now a GA! Thanks everyone (also for all the other GA's, I'm very glad that Alex Raymond is one as well). Fram ( talk) 10:09, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Congrats! Got any other ideas? :) BOZ ( talk) 12:39, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, only looking at those pages I have done a major contribution for, the only ones which could be considered somewhere in the range of a GA are Belgian comics (already mentioned above), and perhaps Polly and Her Pals and McNaught Syndicate. All the others are Start-Class and C-Class material which would need loads of work to get to GA, and are often not important enough (compared to what we have left otherwise) to spend that much work on for the moment.

Amongst other articles, looking at current status (not necessarily at importance) perhaps Dennis the Menace (U.S.) is a possible candidate, and also Bill Finger. Fram ( talk) 13:25, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Nice work everyone.

I think Fram's suggestion of Belgian comics is a good idea - I'd suggest nominating it and we can give it a detailed read through while we are waiting. Also Fram suggested Michel Vaillant, which seems a good idea and there is a discussion on the talk page on this (note there might be a better infobox at {{ Infobox comics meta series}} which should provide a suitable infobox for a lot of the Franco-Belgian comics, a lot of which are missing boxes because nothing fitted until now). ( Emperor ( talk) 15:57, 23 March 2009 (UTC))

Perhaps also Hergé, but I fear that it is too much based on one source (a 1,000 page biography, so not just any source, but still...). Fram ( talk) 20:07, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Definitely that one - it should really go all the way. I cans see some concerns about there being one main source but that sometimes can't be helped. What I'd recommend is trying to move the shorter articles in "Further reading" up and use them as footnotes. Also see if anyone can add more material drawing on any other books on the topic. That should at the very least back up claims made in one biography and may add another angle on some aspects. Broadly that article should be fine from other angles. ( Emperor ( talk) 20:31, 23 March 2009 (UTC))

So Belgian comics, Michel Vaillant, and Hergé would be good places to start? Source-wise, Belgian comics is looking good. Michel Vaillant looks good, but its slim in citations in a few places; we could try it anyway and see what happens? Hergé is well-sourced, but as Fram said it relies mainly on one source; don't know what that does to its GA chances. I'd be willing to nominate any or all of these - opinions? BOZ ( talk) 00:42, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I'd go with Hergé then Belgian comics and then Michel Vaillant. The Herge article doesn't just rely on one source and while there are others we can use integrating them into the article could be what is required on the push to GA, otherwise content and referencing wise it is pretty solid. ( Emperor ( talk) 14:56, 24 March 2009 (UTC))

I can nominate all three, in that case, unless you think there's a good reason to wait. We can work on them while the reviews are pending, and while the reviews are ongoing. BOZ ( talk) 16:57, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I'd stagger the nominations - nominate the next one when the review process starts on the previous one. That way we won't be overstretched if something needs major work. It should also keep the momentum rolling. ( Emperor ( talk) 18:52, 24 March 2009 (UTC))

When I worked on Tintin I had a few sources that covered Hergé as well, and there's plenty of UK print material, Hergé gets profiled every few years somewhere. I'd have to get to a library and make a request for the books, if the library system still has them. One was Harry Thompson's Tintin: Hergé & His Creation, the other book was by Michael Farr, Tintin: The Complete Companion. Looking at Farr's article, he's also written The Adventures Of Hergé, Creator Of Tintin, so that might help expand the article somewhat. It'll have to go in my to-do pile though. Hiding T 10:43, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Hergé has been nominated. :) BOZ ( talk) 19:37, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Started discussion: Talk:Hergé#GA?. ( Emperor ( talk) 20:03, 24 March 2009 (UTC))

Eyes on a DYK wanted

Just to let you know that Le Journal de Mickey will go on the main page as a DYK tomorrow evening (UTC) ( Template:Did you know/Queue#Queues). Perhaps a final cleanup before, and some anti-vandalism eyes during its stay on the main page would be helpful. I will probably not be around during those hours (or only for a small part of that time), so if someone else could keep this up to standards, I'ld be grateful. Fram ( talk) 08:16, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

OHOTMU query

Just wanted to check something out given an issue that's come up with Ultimate Nullifier.

My understanding is that we don't use the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe for in universe material, especially with regard to powers. Have I got that wrong?

(And just a heads up: this is in relation to a David A/The Balance meeting.)

- J Greb ( talk) 22:56, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Some of that which you have reverted is synthesis anyway. I think using the phrase "this possible claim" is violating WP:WEASEL and "official editorial description" is getting a bit to far off the beaten track, since that's a matter of opinion and doesn't actually mean much. That's one reason why we don't like using the OHOTMU as a source; it isn't definitive. The other reason we don't use it is because we may be breaching copyright. If someone wants to say it says this in the <insert writer> written Fantastic Four #478 of 2002. However, by 2006, Marvel described the situation like this, in OHOTMU. But the whole thing may well be moot. The article is relying on primary source for everything, and that's not a good idea. The best solution is to find secondary sources, or merge it somewhere, because it'll just be something for people to argue over otherwise and it all amounts to WP:OR and WP:POV at the end of the day. Unless people agree to write the article neutrally, that's the approach which should be implemented. Writing neutrally means you don;t provide your opinion of what the source is, ("this possible claim" or "official editorial description"). This stuff is fiction, it isn't real and it doesn't exist. Galactus doesn't say or claim anything. A writer puts the words into the character's mouth, for reasons we either know and can source or don;t know and can't speculate upon. Hiding T 23:53, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Power Pack

This sort of content is on all the Power kids articles. Is that OR or is it acceptable? 204.153.84.10 ( talk) 17:18, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Its OR. The bigger issue is the contents of that whole section which is:

Not what you'd put in a PH - they are fictional characters and have no actual "age" so that is all in-universe
Trivial there and pretty much all original research and speculation. This is usually not what you expect to find in an encyclopaedia unless there is a significant point (i.e. that they are a child or teenager in in-universe discussion, or that they are allowed to age naturally, in out-of-universe discussion, like John Constantine or Judge Dredd).

Personally I'd take the lot out and sketch in an actual publication history and throw in {{ expand}}. As it stands it is wide open to having further speculation thrown in, as well as the other problems I flag. ( Emperor ( talk) 20:40, 13 March 2009 (UTC))

It only gets worse. 71.194.32.252 ( talk) 22:03, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

hrm... is it just this article or is it also showing up in the other 5 Power Pack related ones? - J Greb ( talk) 22:27, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

I think it's on all. 71.194.32.252 ( talk) 23:25, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Oh dear. Then I'd recommend doing what I mentioned to all of them: remove that information (it shouldn't be there and is not the kind of speculation we'd really want anywhere in an article) and sketch out an actual publication history in its place. ( Emperor ( talk) 20:05, 17 March 2009 (UTC))

Thanks to AMiB for taking that stuff out; we also need to keep an eye on Jack Power, Alex Power, and Katie Power for the same reasons. 71.194.32.252 ( talk) 23:46, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

OK added to my watchlist. ( Emperor ( talk) 05:14, 20 March 2009 (UTC))

Have I got the wrong end of the stick? Looking over those articles they all still have PHs comprising speculation about the characters ages. ( Emperor ( talk) 14:51, 20 March 2009 (UTC))

Nope, you've got that right - pretty bad. BOZ ( talk) 02:54, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Out of curiousity, is there a reason we have seven or so terrible articles about the characters of a single team book? - A Man In Bl♟ck ( conspire - past ops) 18:38, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Mostly because we have several hundred, at the very least, that we're slowly cataloguing and developing an action plan for. We are planning to sort out Marvel characters first, and use the lessons learned there to run through the rest. We haven't worked out what to do with Transformers articles yet, but we're hoping the methods we develop doing comics articles will be appreciated by wikiprojects operating in that area. I've been bold in the past, but such boldness usually gets reverted. We're trying to get a larger number of people on board to solve or reduce the points of contention. Hiding T 19:07, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Now, same stuff with Katie Power... 71.194.32.252 ( talk) 05:08, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

I've taken it out. ( Emperor ( talk) 20:37, 25 March 2009 (UTC))

I'd remove it from the others but that is all there is in that section - if someone wants to add in actual information on publication history then remove everything else (or add the information and drop a note in here and I'll remove it). ( Emperor ( talk) 20:39, 25 March 2009 (UTC))

Robyn E. Kenealy

Anyone able to find any reliable sources for this comic creator Robyn E. Kenealy - I can only find a mishmash of livejournal posts, open wikis and the like. -- Cameron Scott ( talk) 21:21, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

That was a prod recently, wasn't it. I looked at it and couldn't turn much up, but the person seems important in the New Zealand comics scene. I'm not from New Zealand, so I don't have access to the right sort of sources to work this out one way or the other. It's possible that eventually a redirect to New Zealand comics or Comics in New Zealand will be the best solution. There are a few New Zealand articles I noticed prodded recently that I was in two minds about. It's a struggle trying to tie it all up when it's a scene local to one country. Is it comparable to APE or SPE? I don't know how best to quantify these sorts of questions. Sometimes WP:N is a hammer when we need a scalpel. Hiding T 21:32, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

In some respects I'd be willing to give it the benefit of the doubt but all of the articles seem to consist of a small group of people talking in circles about each other on wikis, blogs, forums. I'll keep looking.. -- Cameron Scott ( talk) 22:59, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I've got nothing but if you find any useful sources on the New Zealand comics scene in general then feel free to throw them in as it might be we can make a New Zealand comics article which can draw together the sources and be a target for merged articles. ( Emperor ( talk) 00:38, 25 March 2009 (UTC))

Perhaps you'd rather just have a merged article called New Zealand and throw the whole culture into that? It reminds me of the last time I was in the US and my host was surprised at how well I spoke English since she had assumed, coming from New Zealand that is apparently in Europe, my first language was Dutch. I suggest paying attention to the people who actually know a thing or two about comics in New Zealand rather than rely on your self-professed inadequate knowledge of the area. As I keep saying, comics.org.nz is a web resource produced by the closest there is to experts on comics in New Zealand. It has won national awards for its content. Not only does it contain articles they have written (e.g. the article on Robyn Kenealy is written by them (check the edit history)). But it is also an archive of scans from newspapers, whole articles from peer-reviewed journals, publicity from films hosted at the national film festival (e.g. The Comics Show - including an interview with Robyn Kenealy), MP3s from radio shows etc. What is it you are looking for? Because you'll probably find it there. Vegetationlife ( talk) 13:39, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Nobody has mentioned comics.org.nz to me before, so I'm not sure who you keep saying it to, nor why such a high level of hostility is needed. What we're looking for, more than anything, are articles that are well sourced and well written. We want those for two reasons; one, they are informative, and two, they don't tend to get deleted, and we're not really that deletionist in these parts, we're more inclined to keep and or merge. I don't think anyone is suggesting we throw it all into the article on New Zealand, why not go the whole hog and just merge everything back to homo sapiens, after all? What we're looking at is that in experience it is better to get a good trunk and branch out from that trunk than to start with the twigs and then work out which trunk to stick them on. Maybe you're the right person to write the NZ Comics article, given that you have the best knowledge. You'll find most of us here are incredibly happy to help with formatting and other issues, although we can get a little pointed if the debate gets heated. I guess you're frustrated at something, so whatever it is, perhaps we can try and, as the song goes, work it out? Hiding T 13:58, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Just had a look at [18] and noticed it is a wiki. Sadly, wikis, Wikipedia included, are not considered reliable sources. However, you indicate that it has an archive of scans from newspapers and whole articles from peer-reviewed journals. It may be possible to utilise those as sources for articles. Hiding T 14:14, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

The issue isn't whether wikis are generally considered reliable, but whether in this case it is reliable. The policy states that they are "largely unacceptable". In this case I'd dispute that it is "unacceptable", partly because of the specific cultural context of New Zealand (a small population with a strong oral/pragmatic/informal culture and limited formal/print culture) and partly because of the way the wiki is managed (by Sysops who have expert status in the NZ comics community e.g. Darren Schroeder (although posting here may be putting yet another NZ comics article at risk, since when I alerted Mr Scott to another article on New Zealand comics he wanted to delete that one too - I'd recommend syrup of figs)). Vegetationlife ( talk) 14:28, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

In this case it isn;t reliable. The only case such self-published sources are considered reliable is when, to quote WP:V, produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications. However, caution should be exercised when using such sources: if the information in question is really worth reporting, someone else is likely to have done so. Now, I've got the problem of looking at the authors of the wiki article, [19], and I'm thinking that I've got no-one I'd be inclined to declare an expert, with tyhe possible exception of Kenealy, although I note I have no guarantee that it is Kenealy editing under that name. So, balancing the policies and guidance, I've got to say that no, in this instance that wiki is not a reliable source. But I'm interested in evaluating the archive of scans from newspapers and whole articles from peer-reviewed journals, because they could well be of use. It's a tough break, this, and one I appreciate, we've run into this wall a number of times on other small press articles. And not even small press articles, it's tough proving notability for a lot of mainstream American comic book creators, let alone European and Australian and New Zealand creators. You seem to have a lot of relevant knowledge, if we can put that together with some decent sources, we can certainly have an article which covers the New Zealand comics scene, which would surely be of benefit to our readers, no? Hiding T 14:42, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately my knowledge is pretty limited and probably of limited value to you - the people who are knowledgeable about NZ Comics and would be able to write your definitive articles don't want to get involved in Wikipedia - because it's too blimmin' painful. And regarding comics.org.nz - my ire wasn't especially raised until Cameron Scott wanted to delete the article Funtime Comics purely on the basis that it was referenced to comics.org.nz - while not all of those references were intended to convey notability, and there is plenty of other evidence to support such a claim (such as awards, national media attention etc.) had he actually checked he would have found that several of those links lead to an article from a peer-reviewed international academic journal. Vegetationlife ( talk) 14:57, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

People disagree about things on Wikipedia all the time. That's why we ask people to concentrate on content, not users. Our policies and guidance allow for a number of outlooks to collaborate, and at times, compete and conflict, which can foster frustration. I try and avoid focussing on that as much as possible, to be honest. I can sympathise with people not wanting to contribute to Wikipedia because it is too painful, we've lost more than enough people due to this. All I can say is that even if they can just point us to press coverage, we can try and do the best we can. You obviously know more than me, so your info is of tremendous value. All I know about comics in NZ are two words; Dylan Horrocks. Hiding T 15:03, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Who's he then? Vegetationlife ( talk) 15:42, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried clicking that link? I'm not really sure how you want me to respond at this point. Hiding T 16:00, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry - it was a joke. Vegetationlife ( talk) 16:47, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure where that all came from, I'm asking people to throw in general sources so we can look into starting New Zealand comics (as we have an area in the categories that is shaping up: Category:New Zealand comics). It would also mean that we can preserve information there is articles get deleted for failing notability (as some are), which would allow us to accumulate good quality sources and look into restarting articles when we can prove WP:N. I'm not really sure what the big problem with that is. ( Emperor ( talk) 15:49, 25 March 2009 (UTC))

I think the issue is one born of frustration. We've certainly all been there. Hiding T 16:00, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Well if you're absolutely sure you want sources on New Zealand comics there's a few here: http://funtime.comics.org.nz/albums/press/ (sorry - don't know how to do that little make the url hide behind a number trick). Vegetationlife ( talk) 16:51, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Is that he right link? Nothing much is working for me at that link.

Also the little number trick is down by putting square brackets around it: [20]. Hope that helps. ( Emperor ( talk) 20:32, 25 March 2009 (UTC))

Heroes inc.

Don't know if anything could, or should, be done for this one. 204.153.84.10 ( talk) 16:52, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Captain Marvel #29

A bit random, but does anyone have an original copy of Captain Marvel #29? I want to check something but only have the trade and I am wondering if there have been changes made when it was reprinted, so wanted to check with someone who has access to the original. ( Emperor ( talk) 04:56, 25 March 2009 (UTC))

What would you like to check? I think a chum has it and can check later with him. -- Cameron Scott ( talk) 11:50, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Basically I'm wondering if it has been re-lettered to reflect future changes in continuity. Specifically where the background of the Titanians is revealed as a sci-fi retelling of the war in Olympus (given in the trade as Olympia). On one page Kronos (comics) is spelt two different ways (the other being Chronos - I did a bit more checking and in the Silver Surfer stories where Thanos returns his name is also spelt Chronos) and we also have the first appearance of Zuras. However, it wasn't until later that these characters were fully tied into the Marvel Universe at the same time they have tried to put some distance between The Eternals and the existing Olympian Gods? So in the original comic was it Olympus, Chronos and Zeus? Or was it always Olympia, Kronos and Zuras? ( Emperor ( talk) 15:31, 25 March 2009 (UTC))

Thumbs

"Olympus before it became Olympus!" "war!"
War involving Uranus and his band of mad titans against Chronos, Oceanus, and other younger titans who wished for a more peaceful order of life"
"Zeus who embraced the ways of the old titans"
"A'lars! fair was this lad" [this is mentor] -- Cameron Scott ( talk) 20:15, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Cheers - that clinches it, they did re-letter it, just missing out one occurrence of "Chronos". ( Emperor ( talk) 20:30, 25 March 2009 (UTC))

Weird! :) BOZ ( talk) 22:29, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

The really weird thing is how well it all fits - Zeus (renamed Zuras) and Zuras look pretty similar and you wonder if Kirby had him in mind (or if they are both spins on Kirby's own Zeus (Marvel Comics). It makes first appearance tricky, although Makkari (comics) is a reasonable precedent. It does underline the problems of just relying on a FCB (actually Makkari may be even more brain-melting from that front) because later stories are always going to try and poke the character into earlier stories. ( Emperor ( talk) 02:07, 26 March 2009 (UTC))

Reading the issue, at the time, it appears that he *is* Zeus. -- Cameron Scott ( talk) 02:11, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Well I suppose to all intents and purposes it was Zeus, although I am unsure how it worked out continuity wise and I'd love to hear what the thinking was behind that. Zeus (Marvel Comics) had just been re-introduced to the Marvel Universe and Tying him into the Titanians was odd as it added a whole origin story. There were clearly Thor-related plans for the character at one point or it might be this was some failed plan or there weren't such continuity Nazi's in charge. Seems odd, I suppose it all worked out OK in the end. ( Emperor ( talk) 02:10, 27 March 2009 (UTC))

List of OverPower card sets

Anyone want to help clean this up? It could look a lot better. It needs some sources and external links at least. I'm not so sure it's notable to list every hero introduced for each set. More information is needed on release dates for the sets. The article needs some decent images as well. This is just some of what is needed, I'm sure there is much more. As of now, it's just a cluttered incomplete list. RobJ1981 ( talk) 18:52, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Good Article drive

Based on discussion in the above section, I have performed a very superficial review of the 117 articles in the Reviewed B-Class Comics articles category, looking specifically for articles which contain development and/or reception sections (for articles on fictional subjects), seem to be fairly comprehensive, and are reasonably well-sourced with a fair number of independent sources, and found 46 articles which meet those criteria from a brief glance:

Achewood, Action Comics 1, Akira (manga), Alex Raymond, All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder, American comic book, Anarky (comic book), Batman: The Killing Joke, Bill Finger, Bill Watterson, Birds of Prey (comics), Bob Kane, Captain America, Captain Britain, Captain Britain and MI13, Catherine Yronwode, Charles M. Schulz, Comics, Countdown to Final Crisis, Daredevil (Marvel Comics), Dave Sim, Dennis O'Neil, Dennis the Menace (U.S.), Doctor Doom, Fantastic Four, Fetus-X, Galactus, Garfield, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Hergé, Hulk (comics), Iron Man, Manga, Peanuts, Powers (comics), Questionable Content, Red Hulk, Silver Age of Comic Books, Spider-Man, Superman Returns, Thor (Marvel Comics), Timothy Hunter, V for Vendetta, Wolverine (comics), Wonder Woman, and Young Romance.

Note that I did not give any of these a thorough read, nor did I select anything based on seeming importance, but rather what the current condition of the article appeared to be. I think this will be a good batch to examine first. Some of these won't require a great deal of work to get to GA-class, although some certainly will. Some will need portions trimmed or removed, while some will need parts expanded or added, and some will need both. Some need improvements in sourcing, but all have enough that we should have a good head start already. Some might even be ready to nominate right now. Some have previously been nominated for GA or FA, so we should look first at any comments that were left, and if possible resolve anything there that still needs work. If you see anything in that category (or anything that should be in that category) that should be taken under due consideration, speak up now. Obviously, we don't have to work on all (or any) of the above, and should only work on those we feel confident in improving. I would not be able to do much for some of these, but I will help out in any way I can.

Let's have a look at which of these we want to work on first. If you have one that you would like to nominate off the bat, let's hear it, otherwise we'll pick something to work on. If you see something that you want to nominate but know it's not ready yet, let's work on making it ready. Generally, if an article's not too far off the mark, a GA reviewer will be generous and give you a reasonable amount of time to fix the article instead of failing it immediately. BOZ ( talk) 19:15, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Note that Peregrine Fisher has already mentioned that he is working on Silver Age, so we will probably want to nominate this soon. If we have a few interested people working on this, and can garner more support, we can have more than one nomination up at a time. We usually have about three nominations in at a time on the D&D project, lately. BOZ ( talk) 19:21, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Also we should have an eye to the discussion we had over Wikipedia 0.7, with an eye to Wikipedia 1.0. There is clearly going to be heavy cross-over but it might help with the targeting. It might show where some need urgent work. Silver Age is looking good but we also need the Golden Age and Bronze Age up to spec too. Also keep an eye open for other articles that will be getting a lot of attention at the moment, for example Green Goblin. Also some are a little too current, I'd like to wait for the Final Crisis to be over and we can set to on it - it should be an easy B and go on quickly to GA (really what it needs is a reception section. Equally CB&MI3 probably hasn't got enough issues under its belt yet. Daredevil, Doctor Doom, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, Hulk, Iron-Man, Galactus and Wolverine. Cast has been doing great work on the Anarky articles so if we can find out what help they need this should be straightforward too.

I'd also like to target some Cs like Cyclops (comics) and Jean Grey. ( Emperor ( talk) 22:17, 26 January 2009 (UTC))

Thanks to BOZ here is my suggestion for The 300, while obviously it is important to get more articles to GA there are also some there which need bringing up to a B and that has to be of equal importance. ( Emperor ( talk) 23:48, 26 January 2009 (UTC))

I also managed to find the previous discussion on a Comics Project Improvement Drive (also an earlier discussion) that I started but illness overtook me before I could do anything about it (although the redirect is still there, if anyone needs it for this: WP:CMC/ID. Anyway I thought I'd add it in - it is a year and a half old but some of the points and examples still stand. ( Emperor ( talk) 01:43, 27 January 2009 (UTC))

My concerns still stand about Hellblazer and I have been collecting resources for a full re-write of the article. I am in a reasonably good position to kick it up a notch or two so it'd be in a better position for driving on to a B and beyond. ( Emperor ( talk) 02:18, 27 January 2009 (UTC))

I worked on Akira for 0.7. I'm not sure how much further I can take it forwards considering I have never read the work. I exhausted the sources I could track down. Bill Finger and Bob Kane tend to get bogged down with issues over the creation of Batman. I could take a pass at Watterson, Peanuts and Schulz. Fantastic Four should really be an FA sooner rather than later. I agree with Emperor that we should look at c's, and also consider some starts and stubs too. 2000AD and Asterix, at C-Class jump at me from a European perspective. Jack Kirby and Stan Lee also. Ouch. We have nearly 12000 stub and start class articles. Um. Maybe my efforts would be better concentrated working those. I know we tried an article a week approach before and it failed, but is it worth doing something like that again? Hiding T 11:05, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
- I am working on another long project, so I have little time for actual article building, but one article I would love to see seriously improved is Burne Hogarth, which is only barely a start class article now. Then again, half of the articles in Category:Start-Class Comics articles of High-importance need serious work, and the other half needs to be downgraded to mid importance :-). The same goes obviously for Category:Stub-Class Comics articles of High-importance: articles like Hal Foster need a lot of work, articles like Marvel Entertainment need re-grading (definitely no longer a stub, may be a C-Class). But Category:Start-Class Comics articles of Top-importance should probably be out common priority: the articles Cartoonist and Penciller are top priority, but have currently not one single source... Fram ( talk) 11:28, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
  - I've done a quick first pass on Burne Hogarth and Hal Foster, just adding sections and infobox and other bits and bobs - what is needed are a lot more references. Updated the rating of Marvel Entertainment. ( Emperor ( talk) 15:33, 27 January 2009 (UTC))
- I agree on 2000 AD - I have the Thrill Power Overload book (and there are interviews lying around) but it is a Big Job (as Mek-Quake might say) and it'll just take a while to work through it (I have been thinking about adding to the creators articles and that breaks things up into handy chunks). ( Emperor ( talk) 15:33, 27 January 2009 (UTC))

OK, so there's no simple solution of what we should be getting at next... ;) Maybe the best thing I could have done was to just start this conversation up again so we could get to talking? :) BOZ ( talk) 16:14, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Is there a better thing, then, that I could be looking for? Because a GA drive doesn't have to be our priority at the moment, and I don't mind doing some research. BOZ ( talk) 16:19, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Here's an easy one, for another perspective. These are the current 56 articles in the Top-importance Comics articles category, sorted by current quality rating:

FA: Batman, Calvin and Hobbes, Superman, The Adventures of Tintin

GA: Graphic novel

B (reviewed): American comic book, Comics (failed GAN), Dilbert, Doonesbury, Fantastic Four, Manga (failed FAC, failed GAN), Peanuts (failed GAN), Spider-Man (failed GAN twice), Will Eisner, Wonder Woman

B (not reviewed): Alan Moore (delisted GA), Comics Code Authority, DC Comics, EC Comics, Mad (magazine) (failed FAC, failed GAN), Popeye

C: Action Comics, Alternative comics, Archie Andrews (comics), Archie Comics (failed GAN), Buck Rogers, Carl Barks, Cerebus the Aardvark, Charlie Brown, Comic book, Comic strip, Creepy, Detective Comics, Digital comics, Jack Kirby, Jean Giraud, Justice League, Little Nemo, Little Orphan Annie, Marvel Comics, Osamu Tezuka, Robert Crumb, Stan Lee, X-Men (failed GAN)

Start: Buster Brown, Cartoonist, Eisner Award, Harvey Award, Inker, Penciller, Rodolphe Töpffer, The Family Circus, The Yellow Kid, Underground comix, Webcomic

Stub: Letterer

BOZ ( talk) 16:54, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

It looks like in the discussion from 2007 that Emperor linked to above, there was ultimately an agreement reached to get the following five articles (with current ratings listed) promoted:

Do we want to add these to our plate now as well? BOZ ( talk) 17:24, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I am really busy with real world stuff at the moment but I *do* possess a complete set of Modern Masters and other reference materials which are full of real world useful information about character creation, direction etc. If you come across an article where you are struggling with that sort of detail, let me know on my talkpage and I'll dig them out.-- Cameron Scott ( talk) 17:41, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Yeah, that's the sort of stuff we'd need. BOZ ( talk) 18:01, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

There seems to be enough of a sentiment that Fantastic Four needs to move forward. I think it looks better than decent, and if we can address the small number of cleanup templates I will nominate it and we can work on the article as we go. BOZ ( talk) 18:03, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I've looked Alan Moore over and tagged what needs sourcing - I'll leave off the B-class assessment until then. ( Emperor ( talk) 21:43, 27 January 2009 (UTC))

The nice thing about a GAR like we have on Alan Moore, or a failed GAN or FAC like some of those have, is that we have a list of things that need(ed at the time at least) fixing, so we know what will put the article a long ways towards where it needs to be. BOZ ( talk) 22:45, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I've now reviewed all those Top Bs (apart from Moore, although we can consider it not making B and I might as well bump it down and then back up again when it passes). They all failed - some were close (Mad doesn't need much more work) some were way off (Popeye). I've left notes on all the talk pages and can go into more detail if anyone wants.

I'm also hoping to get Jack Kirby up to B as there are only a few bits that really need sourcing. It would then be in a pretty solid position and we can work on polishing it up and aiming for GA (I'll start dumping resources on the talk page for us to work through on the road to FA).

Worth remembering that it i also a good idea to throw in a B-class assessment on everything as it it helps people know what to aim for (although in those that are close to a B it is usually referencing where they fall down). ( Emperor ( talk) 19:08, 17 February 2009 (UTC))

By the way, I'd like to mention that I recently updated this portion of the Project page; we were missing about 1/3 of our GAs! BOZ ( talk) 19:59, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I went trawling through the DYK archives and added a couple, and gave a couple dates. I'm up to the end of June 2005 at the minute. Hiding T 11:12, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Wow, good initiative! I added The Rocketeer (film), which was promoted as a GA today. BOZ ( talk) 19:12, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Resources list

Just picking up a previous point following on a comment made from BOZ, I think it is about time we started a resources list so we can easily find people who the relevant material. ( Emperor ( talk) 21:43, 27 January 2009 (UTC))

Yep, like I mentioned to Emperor, we recently started one on the D&D project and hope to keep expanding it; having a similar one here can only be a good thing. BOZ ( talk) 22:43, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

We've got Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics/References, so it just needs a lot of updating. I'm not too hot on table formatting, but I'll add what I own to Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics/References#Books. Hiding T 09:22, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

I've added what I own, but I'm out of time so I couldn;t add all teh info that seems to be needed for the table format. If someone can do a table, I can add info as and when. Also, looking at the online resources, we don;t mention Lying in the Gutters. I think we need to, if only to point out the perils of using that column as a reliable source. My advice would be to get advice on whether to use it from an experienced editor, because there are things it is good for, but there are things it is really bad for. Hiding T 10:22, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

I added an example table there - see what you think and we can expand it once everyone is happy. Some quick thoughts - good call on the Google Books (I have found them very useful for tracking material down, even if the page isn't available the table can then tell you who to ask as you'd then have the specific page) and it'd be worth running the books through {{ cite book}} to standardise everything. ( Emperor ( talk) 16:29, 28 January 2009 (UTC))

To be most useful, I think we should start with comic websites that are searchable, and provide searches. Things like this with an explanation. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 08:00, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes - that is exactly how I search those sites when I'm fishing for stuff, as it is quicker and more efficient - trim the URL back to this and you are away. I'll see what I can do on the websites - taking into account some of the points raised by Hiding about avoiding the gossip columns (although see the lengthy discussion on Talk:Alan Moore#Lying in the Gutters about possibly being able to use some of it).

Hiding has now filled out the table and it looks pretty solid. Any other ideas or does that seem OK? ( Emperor ( talk) 02:30, 5 February 2009 (UTC))

I've still got a bit more work to do on the table. Can we do another table for websites like this? I'm also thinking it might be worth doing a table for The Comics Journal issues I have, so I can list interviews and features. Would that be useful? Hiding T 09:33, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes and yes. I suspect we may end up with a few sub-pages (which is fine by me). I also created a shortcut which might help keep things joined up (and makes it easier to find): WP:CMC/BOOKS (we could do others for the other bits: "CMC/WEB" and potentially others for magazines and articles.

If anyone wants to add their books to this then the table is fixed up and seems to be working fine. ( Emperor ( talk) 20:33, 10 February 2009 (UTC))

Just a note to say I have updated the page with sources for sales and other bits and bobs (like the DMOZ link, which is useful for keeping EL section slimmed down). If anyone has any other useful resource then add it in. I also made a shortcut: WP:CMC/REF. Also don't forget to add any books you might have. ( Emperor ( talk) 16:01, 23 March 2009 (UTC))

Where to start?

Forgotten Realms just made GA - come on, I'm on a roll, what are we going to do first here? :) BOZ ( talk) 02:15, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

OK. How about Spider-Man, Fantastic Four or Silver Age of Comic Books? I'll have a look over them and see if one jumps out at me. ( Emperor ( talk) 03:13, 30 January 2009 (UTC))

On those:

Silver Age of Comic Books, probably the best of the three, a bit of a polish and a search for references and let it loose.
Spider-Man, shaky in the powers and abilities and the splitting off of the FCB has actually left the article a little thin. Needs work but nothing an enthusiastic editor or two couldn't do. I rated this a B but it isn't a good B and it could have gone either way.
Fantastic Four, rather uninspiring in large parts of the PH ("and then this writer and artist worked on the team and then...") and quite a lot of issues and dates could be turned into footnotes to improve the flow. It is also lacking in recent interviews and the like which could really flesh things out. With a bit of a polish it could be nominated (and could even pass - although I doubt it as there are too few secondary sources) but that does imply it is particularly good as an article - it needs more flesh on its bones. This should be easy enough to fix for the recent material (I'll drop some in now) but the "John Byrne" and "1990s" sections might need someone with access to more sources.

So Silver Age, Fantastic Four and Spider-Man in that order. ( Emperor ( talk) 03:39, 30 January 2009 (UTC))

Excellent plan. Peregrine nominated Silver Age earlier today, so that's in there. Probably someone will pick up the review sooner or later, and will most likely give us some time to fix any problems they see. Spidey and FF are both decent, and I'll see what work I can put into them over the weekend. I think if we can give a concise summary of Spidey's FCB, that will go a long way. BOZ ( talk) 21:51, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I'll see what I can do about adding more recent material in FF. ( Emperor ( talk) 22:55, 30 January 2009 (UTC))

I'm looking over Spider-Man at the moment, and making comments on the article talk page. BOZ ( talk) 04:41, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Did the same with FF. Bedtime. :) BOZ ( talk) 06:37, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

A month ago Tenebrae suggested proposing Alex Raymond and as the article has remained stable and looks solid to me I thought we might as well propose this. First though I'd appreciate it if a few fresh sets of eyes looked it over as I might have missed something and there might be a gap in the coverage I don't know about. ( Emperor ( talk) 19:59, 7 February 2009 (UTC))

Whenever you're ready. :) Tenebrae has been out for a bit, but hopefully he'll pop back in time to help out with this and Spidey (and if not, I'm sure he'll appreciate the effort when he does get back). :) BOZ ( talk) 04:25, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Spidey is a success, Silver Age is pending, and I will work on and nominate FF in the near future. Alex Raymond should also be nominated soon. BOZ ( talk) 20:16, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

What next?

I have done quite a few of the B-class assessments so I went through the category and had a look at others that might be suitable for pushing on to GA, after we've given the above batch a go (if they pass or need a bit more work before being re-nominated we can work on another set and keep things moving forwards):

Psylocke - it looks like the other media and alternative versions could be split off. I'd also like more input from the creators on character development and the changes that have been made. However, it won't need a major rewrite (as Hiding worked on this a while back).
Bob Kane - could do with a little expansion and more dense referencing but there is nothing problematic about the article.
Bill Finger - ditto
Daredevil (Marvel Comics) - been nominated for GA in the past. The powers and abilities needs referencing and parody sections always give me The Fear. Again I'd like to see more coverage from the creators' angle.
Peanuts - another GA nominee, in need of some sourcing but it is an important article and with better references it could easily start the push to go all the way. I can't claim to know much about the actual strip but it should be possible to find an editor who could take the lead on this
Pride & Joy (comics) - this could an interesting one. A has taken the lead in improving Runaways articles and put this story arc up for GA. It would be useful to have a few GA story arc examples. Personally I think it needs more references as a little too much comes from Marvel.com and I am sure we can beef up the reception with some more reviews and some publications figures. I'd imagine if we pitched in with some extra help and copy editing A would be happy to go point on re-nominating this.
Will Eisner - solid content but needs a lot more references, however, they do seem to be quite a links at the end which could be moved up as footnotes to support the text. Doing that should set this up very nicely. This has a lot of potential

If anyone feels more moved by anything on that list they can pitch in there, but the main focus should be on the currently nominated ones. ( Emperor ( talk) 05:58, 9 February 2009 (UTC))

Can I add Yellow Kid, Scrooge McDuck and Spider-Man: One More Day to the list. I think the latter two may well be in good enough shape to just be nominated, but I'd like a second opinion on that and someone with a knowledge of the topics to guide them through. With regards your list, I can help out at Peanuts, Will Eisner and I have a ton of Frank Miller related Comics Journal stuff, so that should help at Daredevil. Bob Kane and Bill Finger I can keep an eye on, Wesley Dodds might be a good man to ask about them. We did have problems with a user at those pages a while back, hopefully that has passed now though. Hiding T 12:48, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments - looks like those articles make a good set we can work towards getting assessed.

On your suggestions:

Yellow Kid - I don't know much about the topic but it is lacking an infobox and it feels like there could be something on reception, as a racial (racist?) character I'd have thought it would be the focus of serious discussion.
Scrooge McDuck - I'd fail that as a B, the characterization section, in particular, is very thinly referenced and could be considered original research (there is even an important block quote that is unsourced). It is solid content-wise but it needs a lot more work on sourcing.
Spider-Man: One More Day - this looks solid, it should be easier to get important limited series and storylines high quality classes because the material is fairly well-constrained (long running characters and series need a lot of coverage, which required a large amount of sourcing). I've given it a quick polish and the only improvements would be: more sales information (presumably moved to reception), a tweaking of the wording to the plot so it is a little more out-of-universe (as [{WP:WAF]] is one of the GA criteria) and some primary sourcing (which issue did the events in the plot happen in?). Nothing major and should be easy enough to get it up to standard and run through the GA assessment.

Just my fourpenneth anyway. ( Emperor ( talk) 16:23, 10 February 2009 (UTC))

I would be OK to nominate One More Day now if you think we could pass it with a little bit of work. Emperor posted a few relavant links on the Spider-Man talk page. BOZ ( talk) 01:06, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah I had a quick run through and got all the references in the PH formatted in the same way (with an eye to the Spider-Man GA nomination. Only two points:

The plot could still do with a bit of out-of-universe tweaking and there seems to be an awful lot of "Peter"s in there - Petter did this, Peter did that,
This is the link I added to the Spider-Man talk page [21], it might be that it isn't deemed worth using in itself but it does contain links to all 5 of the Quesada interviews and I think we only use the first 2. Again the others might not contain any material we've not got but as all the links are there we might as well see if we can't make use of them as it never hurts to throw in some more sourced information as long as it is useful. See what you think.

Other than that it is looking pretty solid and if someone checks over those two points and sees what they think (it might be neither need to be addressed) I think it is good to go - it is definitely in the upper-B bracket and unless there is something I've completely overlooked I suspect it'll only need a polish to get through. I'll take another pass at it tomorrow and see if there are any little tweaks. ( Emperor ( talk) 03:10, 16 February 2009 (UTC))

I've dropped A a note about Pride & Joy (comics) and left some quick thoughts at: Talk:Pride & Joy (comics)#Moving forward. I think with a copy edit, improving reception and other quick polishes then it should be in a good position to be renominated. If anyone has any thoughts then you can drop them into the talk page (or just get stuck into the article). ( Emperor ( talk) 15:38, 17 February 2009 (UTC))

We just picked up another GA [22] (although it is more of an updating of the infobox to reflect the assessment) - it also underlines the fact that half of our GAs are film or TV articles whihc we don't have a lot of input into as a project. ( Emperor ( talk) 17:30, 17 February 2009 (UTC))

Just picked it up, yes, but it's been a GA for a year and a half. :) Films and TV stuff tend to get more love because they are more accessable to the average person. I, for example, have viewed Batman and Superman far more on a screen than I have in a comic (but then, I'm a Marvel guy). Since people who don't even read comics are likely to be working on comics-related "visual arts" articles, it's no suprise that we'll have more of them with better quality. Plus, reviews of film and TV are probably much more common, making it much easier to meet the requirements. BOZ ( talk) 18:07, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Oh yes - if you can't get a high profile comic-based film up to a B or GA then it is usually through lack of interest/effort whereas we have to really work hard to find good sources. ( Emperor ( talk) 19:08, 17 February 2009 (UTC))

One More Day is a success; what next? BOZ ( talk) 03:25, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Something small and easy and almost done? - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 03:32, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Winnie Winkle? :-) Just want to thank you all for the great work on these articles. Oh, Michel Vaillant may be a good candidate, if you want something European for a change. It should be close to GA already. Fram ( talk) 15:14, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

They both look worthy candidates, a read through, copy editing and seeing there are any good sources around we can use to help nail it down and I think they can be nominated (there don't appear to be any problems that a quick polish can't fix):

I've added an infobox and a quick tweak to Winnie Winkle and passed it as a B. It looks solid enough to shoot for a GA.
Hiding has already left a note about going for GA on Michel Vaillant and he seems to think it is worth a shot.

Do you fancy going on point for either of these? ( Emperor ( talk) 16:22, 26 February 2009 (UTC))

I don't have much time for comics articles for the moment (sadly), and I have exhausted nearly all sources available to me for the Winnie Winkle article, so I think that other editors should need to step in to get it to the next level. I'll try to help, but that's about it. Fram ( talk) 08:50, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

If you think it's mostly OK, I can nominate it and we can let the reviewer point out anything that needs fixing? BOZ ( talk) 13:55, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

If the coverage is thought to be OK then give it a shot. Looking over Michel Vaillant it looks like it could do with more referencing. ( Emperor ( talk) 15:27, 27 February 2009 (UTC))

BOZ, I would like to have it nominated, thanks. It probably is far from perfect, but to have a thorough review by an independent reviewer may only help us in improving the article. Fram ( talk) 15:37, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Done! I'll also give it a quickie copyedit. BOZ ( talk) 16:17, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Jack Kirby passed a B and, as it was waiting for a few key statements to be sourced, it is a pretty solid B and should be easy enough to push on to a GA. I've left a few thoughts and sources on the talk page. Coverage looks pretty solid (although his work on creator rights might need an extra paragraph or so) and it is pretty much down to needing a polish and making sure everything is properly sourced. ( Emperor ( talk) 04:22, 7 March 2009 (UTC))

OK, I've promised to look at Peanuts, but I'll hit "King" next. BOZ ( talk) 07:19, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Got that; will have a look at Kirby before long, then I think I promised someone I'd help with Ms. Marvel. ;) BOZ ( talk) 19:30, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I've started a section at: Talk:Jack Kirby#GA? and will go through the article giving it a quick polish and seeing if anything else needs sorting. As I have said it passed as a solid B, coverage is good and I suspect all it'll need is a polish and a sprinkling of references and it should be good for a GA (and I can't see problems with it getting an A after that). ( Emperor ( talk) 21:06, 9 March 2009 (UTC))

We're really rolling now!

After success with Spider-Man and Spider-Man: One More Day, we've a review going for Silver Age of Comic Books, and we've got Winnie Winkle, Pride and Joy (comics) and Alex Raymond nominated. I'm slowly working on Fantastic Four, and I plan to get to work on Peanuts before long. BOZ ( talk) 20:35, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes it seems to be going well. I suppose what we need to do is:

Start looking for more articles of lower quality to work on to keep likely GA candidates flowing in. We have plenty of failed GAs to go through (see above) but we'll want Starts/Cs moving on to Bs and Bs to GA.
Draw up our Wikipedia 1.0 list (we already pretty much have this outlined after the Wikipedia 0.7 discussion and we can leave room for more proposals) - it is this list I suggest we automate to monitor quality/importance. It might be this list suggests articles to us that we can run through the improvement drive to bring up to standard - as Alex Raymond shows, with effort, and some good editors naturally, on a higher importance article we can take it from a stub to close on GA in a month or so.
We might need to look at some articles which need splitting/expanding - the one that came up with Alex Raymond is Flash Gordon (probably needs splitting and focusing on the comic strip, with the rest going off to something like Flash Gordon (franchise), with perhaps another article for Flash Gordon (comics)) - see Talk:Alex Raymond.

That way we should have a steady stream of articles and we can pick out the ones that need community focus (GAs but also articles that need a lot of work) which should mean we get quality improvement across the board and we'll be sitting pretty when Wikipedia 1.0 comes around. ( Emperor ( talk) 04:16, 7 March 2009 (UTC))

We might also want to have some medium to long term aims, like getting the Golden (currently C), Silver (GA nominated now), Bronze (currently C) and Modern Age of Comic Books (currently C) up to GA as they do form an important part of comics history. I've added material to the talk page of the Silver Age article but will start a section for sources on all the Comic Book Ages articles so we can start building up material for improvement and feel free to drop in thoughts on improvement. What we also probably need to do is see if we can't make them more consistent, presumably using lessons we've learned from the Silver Age article (which doesn't have subjective lists of important creators and titles, which are clearly a problem - important examples should be mentioned in the body of the text. Ditto for things like timelines).

Also getting comics improved is also important (currently B, failed GA). ( Emperor ( talk) 15:39, 8 March 2009 (UTC))

Don't forget Belgian comics... I have trouble illustrating this, and don't see how I can integrate infoboxes or something similar, but I think it is a pretty solid article otherwise (but I'm biased in this). It failed B-class for not being illustrated / accompanied only, so we should be able to get it at least there without too much effort. One article that needs a lot of work but is equally essential as the comic book ones is comic strip, but it is not the easiest article to make comprehensive since it covers a wide spectrum (time and placewise). Fram ( talk) 07:42, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

That article is impressively close to GA. Remove the unsourced statements, organize the info a bit better, add fair use images, and it's done. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 07:48, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Sure, get the fixes in there and nominate; you'll have helpers! Like I say above, we have one review ongoing, and three pending, so I think we can handle more with a good crew of working fellows ready to tackle it. :) By the way, I mention Fantastic Four and Peanuts above, but I'm really not working on either of those at the moment; they both have serious need for sourcing, and if someone can dig some up (I think I have overlooked some recently posted ones on the FF talk page) I'd be glad to do some work with those. BOZ ( talk) 22:20, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm willing to help on Fantastic Four and Peanuts but my time is limited and it keeps getting eaten up with issues on my watchlist and talk page. Apologies, I will tinker with them as and when I can. Hiding T 23:50, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Couldn't the illustration issue be partly addressed by looking at the articles on titles and creators?

Also what do people think about a "comics country" infobox? Important titles, creators, etc. ( Emperor ( talk) 15:32, 11 March 2009 (UTC))

The country info box sounds interesting. The problem with important articles, titles, etc is that in most cases these can only be stated with a few decades distance. But we could give the idea a try. Zoli79 ( talk) 20:40, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Think this will work? - J Greb ( talk) 00:19, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

This is now live here: {{ infobox comics nationality}}. ( Emperor ( talk) 01:23, 17 March 2009 (UTC))

I'm trying to find more time to get to work, but been very busy lately. BOZ ( talk) 22:14, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

OK as Silver Age has gone through what next? We are waiting on a couple and a few are in progress but are there any up and comers that we can be looking at? There is a discussion over at Talk:Jack Kirby#GA?. Any more? ( Emperor ( talk) 01:23, 17 March 2009 (UTC))

Been busier than I care to think about. (Broken record, anyone?) I have absolutely not had the time to look into anything else. Maybe look over the articles mentioned above or in previous discussions? BOZ ( talk) 03:29, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

It doesn't seem to pique people's intersest, but Red Hulk is the closest article to GA that I know of. It would be nice alongside the main Hulk article, if we want to take that to GA, as well. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 03:36, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

OK sounds like a plan. It isn't a title I follow (or plan on at the moment) but I'm happy to give it a read through and see if I can't dig up some more references. I assume you are volunteering to go on point for this now the Silver Age article has passed?

Also, yes I think we need to get the Hulk all the way to the top as it is one of our most important articles. It might require a bit more diplomacy so if we focus on the smaller (and easier to box off) article we can keep working on Hulk and then see what we can do about the last push on to GA.

Sound like a plan? ( Emperor ( talk) 04:50, 17 March 2009 (UTC))

Sounds good. I'll take point. It needs a leade, a copyedit, and some plot added (ironically enough). I'll try and do those, and then hopefully some uninvolved editors (like Emperor, BOZ, etc.) can comment on it, then we'll put it up for GA. I agree we should continue to improve Hulk a bit at a time. Working on the important ones is...important. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 05:04, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Right. I'll give it a detailed read through this evening and leave my thoughts in a GA section on the talk page and we can take it from there. The only big hurdle I see from keeping an eye on the page is a lack of stability due to some back and forth over identity (and possibly other issues) so it might help if we get a few more eyes on the article to help establish a solid consensus, if needed. ( Emperor ( talk) 14:26, 17 March 2009 (UTC))

OK I've been through it and copy edited bits and bobs (as has PF) and added more thoughts/sources here Talk:Red Hulk#GA? I think with more material it could be possible to shoot for a GA - it'd certainly be worthwhile, the main problem a reviewer might flag is it could be a little premature only 10 issues in and the mystery not yet revealed (which might mean major changes to the article)). Anyway if we could have a few more eyes on it and if anyone has any other sources then throw them in. ( Emperor ( talk) 02:00, 19 March 2009 (UTC))

How's that one coming along? Need any help? BOZ ( talk) 00:24, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I assume recent controversy has pretty much killed this for the time being as it can't meet the stability criteria. ( Emperor ( talk) 01:58, 27 March 2009 (UTC))

D'oh, right... Do we have any other good candidates? As you know, I have nominated Hergé, and will do Belgian comics and Michel Vaillant over the next few weeks. Any other ideas besides those? BOZ ( talk) 03:59, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I suppose with a little work Peanuts could be viable. Also Bob Kane, Bill Finger and Will Eisner are getting there but someone with some good resources to hand could go through and make the referencing denser and then we could take a look at them with an eye to a GA nomination. ( Emperor ( talk) 14:21, 27 March 2009 (UTC))

Yep, all of those are good, if we can find the additional sourcing. Actually, Kane and Finger are pretty well sourced already; I could nominate Finger now, and if someone wants to work on it in the meantime we can give that a shot, and I'll nominate Kane after that one pesky "citation needed" gets resolved. ;) BOZ ( talk) 15:08, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

OK I'll take a quick run over Finger later as I can see a few places it can be tweaked (OK that didn't sound right but still...). ( Emperor ( talk) 16:14, 27 March 2009 (UTC))

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