As I've mentioned recently I have been working hard behind the scenes to try and make it easier for people to particpate in the creation process. To this end I have been toying around with creating a DCU Guide Wiki.

Creating such a wiki has presented a number of designing problems that have pushed back this announcement quite a bit. However, while there are still some things I'm not completely satisfied with I believe it has gotten to a point where I can let you in on the secret and test the waters to see if anyone would be interested in helping to build the wiki itself.

The wiki has been set up to look like the Guide itself with no ads of any kind. For now the wiki is supposed to concentrate on the Who's Who part of the Guide with the potential for opening it up at a later date. Unlike a lot of other wiki's the Guide wiki will for now be a closed wiki that will only be editable for persons who sign up and are approved by the Guide staff.

Before going into further detail let me show you a couple of screenshots:

Version A:
Version B:

Version A is slightly different from the current Guide design when it comes to the header titles (Personal Data, Overview, History and so on) which are a bit more like the normal wikis, where version B is closer to the normal look. Unfortunately I haven't been able to remove the space in between the top header and the character name or I would have been able to practically duplicate the Guide layout for everything exept the sidebar.

The sidebar is naturally a bit different as it has to include som of the wiki tools. I'm not sure how closely I'll be able to dublicate the Guide layout here but still working on some tweaks.

While I've been able to make the wiki automatically change the color of the lines or background color for the headers depending on the character type, one thing I haven't been able to dublicate is the way the current Guide highlights any link according to the character type or as comic link. I'm afraid this is one thing we'd have to live without if we go wiki.

Now what I am interested in knowing is whether or not anybody would be interested in helping to build the wiki and migrate the profiles from the Guide into the wiki. I haven't found a way to do this automatically so what would have to be done is a copy/paste job from the Guide page into the wiki page. I've created a special version of the who pages where you can just copy everyting within a box and paste it into the page linked to at the top of the page itself. Fairly easy but because of the number of profiles we have something that would take a lot of time to do alone.

If anybody should be interested in helping out please let me know. Also if anybody has knowledge of wikis in general and might be able to help out in the design I'd be very interested as well.

Finally and really important. How do you think we should name the wiki pages? On the Guide the character pages are listed in chronological order of their appearance within the DC Universe. This means that if a new character is created with the same name as an existing one (eg. "Superdude") but whose adventures take place before the already existing one, "Superdude" would become "Superdude II" and the new character would become "Superdude". Now in the wiki it is not as easy to change the name globally and a redirect wouldn't work as the original would now be used for a different character.

We could use the character's real name in the file so that the "Batman" filename would become "Batman (Bruce Wayne)" for instance but how should we then treat character's whose identities we don't know. A possibility would be to list the group they belong to like for instance "Mercury (Metal Men)". Also should we split gods out so that the Metal Man Mercury would be "Mercury (Metal Men)" and Mercury the god would be "Mercury (Roman Gods)".

Lots of questions but better to address them now than after we've moved the entire thing.

Anyway, please let me know what you think of the idea, even if you don't like it.

Hey Tenzel, your stuff looks great. My name is Billy Arrowsmith, and I'm acting as a representative of the DC Database on wikia, currently the largest cohesive resource for DC Comics content on the net. Have you guys ever considered merging with a larger site? You guys have an incredible degree of quantity and detail in your content, a passion which I share with you, and I can't help thinking that we could help out with this.

Making good use of wiki software is a huge benefit to any site, and it makes everything much easier. Its also a lot of hard work, though, and we've been on the stuff for five years at this point perfecting standards and templating into an intricate and well-defined system. Much like yourselves, we share the goal of wanting to completely catalogue everything in the DC Universe, including both Pre-Crisis and Post-Crisis information, all with the tender loving care that it deserves. We've always respected you guys heavily as a community, and now that you're considering manually moving all of your stuff to the same software that we use anyway, we thought it would be worthwhile mentioning the possibility of maybe joining forces towards the same common goal. This would not only make both of us much more effective, but also double or even triple both of our contributors and the amount of pageviews we receive. Our statistics speak for themselves, if you're interested in taking a look at them, I would be happy to supply. If you guys were hypothetically interested in something like this, clearly it would require a ton of discussion, but we're very accessible to talk with on our forums or slightly less often used IRC chatroom. This isn't an offer that I'm extending casually, we have a great deal of respect for what you guys do here and I think we could both do it better if we tried working together.

Hi Billy. I'm quite aware of the DC database on wikia and must admit that the fact that you showed up and a number of other wikias have showed up over the last few years the Guide has lost quite a bit of visitors who seek out the wikia's instead. This of course has to do with the fact that the wikia's are constantly being updated by a large number of people and not just a few guys who have to keep on top of everything. These days the fact that it is easy to participate and feel like a bigger part of the project has also become a big factor in almost everything on the web.

I think you have made the DC Comics Database into quite the resource and I'm kinda sad that we didn't have this talk back when the wikia was initiated as it seems our goals to a large degree have been the same. The goal of the DCU Guide was from the very beginning (back when it went from being the Unofficial DC Comics Indexes to the DCU Guide) to try to bring together as many sites as possible in a sort of shared community that would let everyone gather information and access of these sites from one big portal so to speak. The goal was to have one place where you could get as much information as humanly possible without having to go through hundreds of sites to find what you were looking for. Basically you could say that the goal was to create something a bit wiki-like back in the days before wikipedia. Unfortunately not a lot of site-owners saw the possiblities in such a partnership and the Guide became much more a site onto itself.

That being said I must admit that I'm not much for handing over over 15 years of hard work that I have fought and paid for to another site. I think the time for merging the sites has past. Had we been approached back when the DC Comics Database was about to start up I would have happily jumped at the idea and hosted the databse here at the Guide.

While I really think you've done a great job one of my biggest concerns with the wikia's is all the ads. I have always kept the Guide ad-free and I think that the ads really screw up the overall design of the page which is really sad because otherwise I have to admit I might very well have thrown in the towel and called it quits as I will never be able to build the Guide at the same rate as the Database. The fact that you have only been around for a fairly short time compared to the Guide and already have around 40.000 articles as opposed to the Guide's around 20.000-25.000, has been part of my reasoning behind testing the waters to see if anybody would be interested in helping out on a more hand-on way than before by using wiki software.

I hope this doesn't come of as sour grapes or anything. I really have a lot of respect for what you are doing but at this point I'm afraid I'm not ready to give up years of hard work. I really do appreciate the offer though and I won't rule out the possibility of working together in some way. Please feel free to contact me privately to see if there might be some way we could benefit from each other that didn't include me practically shutting down the Guide.

Your position is completely understandable, I would probably feel the same way if I was in your predicament. However, I think this is worth discussing further so that we both completely know where the other person is coming from. If you really just don't want to, that's perfectly fine, because what you've built here is in many ways like your child. And I'm not coming here to propose that you lose that.

I would never suggest that you completely give up all of your years of hard work, that would be a completely unreasonable expectation, and contrary to my intentions. I'm thinking of this more like a marriage of our two sites, not a consumption or osmosis. This is like the database equivalent of bonding to the Spectre. Nothing would be lost, and I can promise you that the name and prestige of the DCU Guide would be heavily upheld, not simply carelessly absorbed. We're not like some sort of large faceless corporation, we're a family that we want you to be a part of. You would be in complete control the entire time, and we would work hard to preserve the legacy that you started here. This is also a personal invitation onto our staff, where the things you've accomplished would be given every bit the honor they deserve. If you wanted to work together, our main priority wouldn't be harvesting the Guide of its information, it would be integrating the two communities so that everyone is happy, no matter what it takes.

As far as the ad situation goes, that's a default wikia thing that only shows up for unregistered users. All extraneous advertisements go away the second you become a wikia user (which is free and takes about thirty seconds), and then you never have to look at them again. They don't interfere with the site design at all.

Although we've never really had direct communication, we've always revered your content... I personally try to link to your character articles every opportunity I get as a preferred external source. If a merger isn't ideal, I'd like you guys to know that we still very much consider you kindred spirits. That kind of online comics community hub is exactly the kind of thing we have also been trying to achieve. (my point here being that if you absolutely can't see this working out, I'd like our two communities to at least remain friends)

It's a great tradition that you started here, man. I would like to see it live on in the most efficient manner possible. I wouldn't suggest this if I didn't think it was completely in both of our best interests.

I must say that I do not like the notion of the DCU Guide going wiki, so I voted no. It is a shallow format, wide open to abuse and difficult to control. It _is_ a viable option for a project with many participants - alas this is, at present, not the case with the DCU Guide.

I have a suggestion: Perhaps you are familiar with a now non-existent site named (tvtomecom) which was a volunteer-supported television episode guide page. (Its successor is the ad-infested tvcom.) Registered contributors left their info in a structured mask, the content was then automatically mailed to a show editor who approved, corrected or rejected the data which showed up on the site only after being edited. You could call this a controlled wiki approach.

Just my two cents.

Fine sites to cooperate with would be - in my opinion - DarkMark´s Indexing Domain (pre-crisis stuff) and Mike Voyles' Amazing World of DC Comics (golden and silver age stuff).

Make that four cents.

Either approach works with me, really.

I would take the opportunity to revamp entires as i enter them, but would be bothered with the idea of someone coming in and changing what ive entered. Especially with the chronologies.

Darkmark's and Mike's sites are really just pre-Crisis (Mike's just copies the Whos Who entries, no new content there at all) and this site is supposedly the current DCU continuity and chronology (i say supposedly because it has a tendency to change faster than we can update it!)

I am always encouraged and get a big kick when i see new entries here, and it makes me want to do more stuff. I've tried to change stuff on the Database, but have had problems logging in for some reason. Their Doris Lee/Adele Knight entries are totally wrong for example.

Best of luck with whatever you decide... since Geocities died, this is my only *sniff* home...

Hope to hear from some of the oldtimers on this topic as well as some of the "youngbloods"

After working with Tenz for over six years on the GL Corps Web Page, I'll throw in with any direction he believes is best for the DCU Guide. He's been a great partner to work with, and completely understands my perspective on where the page has come from, and where I want it to go.

I'm looking forward to increasing material as well as updating and contributing to the DCU Guide itself.

FrankFlynn61 wrote:


zilch wrote:


Trust me. These are some concerns that I have taken very seriously before even considering going the wiki route and why I would do so with some definite limitations.

First of all the DCU Guide wiki would not be a wiki that everybody could edit. You would have to be given editor status to be able to create and edit pages. This would of course limit the number of users but on the other hand it would make it easier to control. To begin with new contributers to the Guide would have to post material to the board which could then be approved and uploaded into the wiki itself. Based on the quality of the material, the frequency of their posts and so on they could be awarded editor status and be allowed to upload themselves. Finally editors that abuse their status would of course have their status revoked.

This to a certain degree seems a bit similar to the way things were handled on the tvtome. Using a wiki database just seem to make it easier to keep track of changes and have more editors working on the page without having to worry about having the lastest version on hand.

Specifically regarding the chronologies, those pages would be locked so that only a very select few with a special status would be able to change those. As I've discussed before I've started work on a master chronology sheet that puts all DC books in chronological order so that we always have one reference point for all chronologies to ensure that there are no discrepancies such as Batman appearing in Detective Comics #876 before Batman #798 but Robin the other way around (not an actual example). Likewise comic indexes will be locked once the chronological information has been added and additions to those will have to be noted either here or in the discussion pages to be corrected by people given permission to make such changes.

So while we'll be using a wiki core for the Guide it will still function quite differently and I'm doing my very best to keep a unique layout so that people don't confuse it with a regular wiki.

I hope this answers a few of your concerns. I am right now in the final testing stages of the wiki and hope to be able to open it very soon so that we can start actually trying it out.

I'm all for a wiki DCU Guide with a limited number of people who can edit the entries. I LOVE this site, but one of the (albeit minor) "problems" with it has been the lack of immediate updates or at least direct feedback on some of the work that's been done. I used to be quite the contributor here, but on more than one occasion, I wasn't sure whether some of my work ever got into the site or whether it was forgotten on the way.

While I have nothing but respect for Tenz and the rest of the administrators, and while I find it perfectly understandable that they have other things to do in their lives, a wiki version could eliminate this problem at least partly. More active contributors who can make information public means a more up-to-date site, and that is really the only major thing that this wonderful site is lacking right now - being up-to-date.

If the DCU Guide went wiki, I would find it both easier and more meaningful to contribute to it now and then. And if you would have me as one of the ones with editing status, I'd be delighted.


Most humbly and respectfully,

/ola

And I'll add that I'm interested in helping out here again, even if you don't go wiki and even if I don't get editing status. I'll try to finish my long-overdue Animal Man index soon. But I'm a father of one-year-old twins these days, so it may take a while even when I'll try to work on it.

/ola

I'll chime in with Hellstone here. The site is huge and a bit cumbersome to get updated, so I think a wiki form would be advantageous for the site.

I (and Hellstone) have been editing the Swedish comics wiki Seriewikin for a few years now, so please feel free to ask questions on anything you'd want to know about editing and organizing the site, and I will try to respond to the best of my knowledge. I'm not too sure how much time I could offer for actual work through. I'm the father of an 8 months old boy, so I'm dividing my time between the my family and comics related activities in Sweden. And then there's always that pesky real job.

Starting January 2010, I'm on parental leave for 7 months, so maybe I could help out in some small way.

I've been updating the GLC Web Page space sector guide and it's pretty sweet seeing the edits/updates posted. Any major or minor updates can be done quickly. Good stuff.

If it is moderated a la tvtome, count me in. I am eager to get this show on the road.

And if it helps cut the backlog, the sooner the better.

Been sifting through some older posts. There is a huge amount of index material waiting to be processed.

Any news for us?

Not sure how tv-tome is moderated so I can't speak for that, but we've been working with it for real since late november/early december last year and once we've gotten some of the bugs out of the system it seems fairly easy to work with.

Right now we are three persons working on getting things in shape and we hope to go official with the Green Lantern Corps Web Site i February.

That being said you are all welcome to see the progress we are making at http://www.dcuwiki.net

You can also sign up for an account and as soon as I've set up some proper explainations of the templates we can start inviting people to help move pages and create/update old ones.

Thank you for the update. Since no news had come through after a flurry of activities last reported on October 30, slight worries had crept up.

Still at work on Ironwolf, Twilight and Fires of the Revolution (Earth-Chaykin, so to speak) and willing to contribute once the new wiki is working.