User talk:Duke

Roll Call - great idea!

I like your addition of the various sections to the individual issue pages, the panel counts, etc. I will be emulating your format in future pages I create. Also glad to see that you have been fleshing out the content itself. I look forward to creating the Wiki with you!

I'm always interested in knowing a little bit about my fellow contributors. Would you be interested in saying a few words about yourself on your User page? I'm hoping that if we have a few profiles posted, it will encourage more people to get involved. --Gopher 13:01, 23 August 2006 (PDT)

Thanks. I've added a quick bio, will add more later. Plan to learn on you & Scott pretty heavy as I learn the Wiki ropes.

Well, Scott is probably a much better resource for Wiki code than me, as I have only been using it since early July. However, you can probably learn the majority of what you need to know within the first month or so. If I can be of help, please let me know.

One tip right off the bat though - "sign" your discussions by placing ~~~~ at the end of your messages. This will automatically add a link to your user page and a date/time stamp, as I have done here: Gopher 13:51, 24 August 2006 (PDT)

Few points

• Could you please not create blank category pages (that is, a category page without at least an explanatory sentence)
• Is it really worth creating pages for AR appearances? You could cover them in a list on the AR page (and, for TTT, a note on the Legion-related retelling's page). By definition, if it's an AR thing, it doesn't really merit a whole page devoted to it, y'know.

And since I got careless and replied to you on Craigopher's page by mistake:

BTW, any idea how to add an Elseworlds link to the eras box at left? - Duke 15:06, 26 August 2006 (PDT)

Me or Scott would have to do it. - Reboot (SoM) talk page 16:27, 26 August 2006 (PDT)

OK. Not sure how/when I created a blank category page. I'll try and be more careful. Obviously, in my enthusiasm to wiki the Legion, I just started pounding away without really studying the instruction book.

My thought on making individual issue pages for AR comics was that some fans might want to see the cover to know what they are looking for. Also, although many AR books only require a line or two, some may warrant a more thorough write-up.

I also was under the impression that with wiki, there was no such thing as too much information. But I admit, I'm not really too ingrained with the wiki culture. I've never written or edited a Wikipedia entry.

Maybe I'm being dense. I'm not sure what you mean by "the Legion-related retelling's page." Duke 16:47, 26 August 2006 (PDT)

I'm also of the opinion that AR pages are fair game in the Wiki. The whole concept of a Legion Wiki is basically pretty anal when you think about it. I'd like to think that some day when the Wiki is fairly "complete" that you could look up basically anything about the Legion in it, down to the smallest AR detail. However, with so many pages about regular issues and details not yet created or fully fleshed out, it might be better to focus more on those areas first. Some of my own contributions could arguably br AR, such as covers of reprint issues, although I have tried to limit those to issues that have already been referred to on existing pages.

I noticed that your Superman v1 80 page was an "orphan," meaning that no current page linked to it. Other than seeing it mentioned on the Recent Changes page, we might never have known the page existed (actually, a glance at the Orphaned Pages page would also point it out). That's why I created a link to it from the Superboy v1 89 page. Probably a better order would be to create the link to the non-existent page (creating a "demand" for it, as it were) from an existing page, and then create and fill in the new page.

Ultimately, the contributions that will add the greatest value to the Wiki are those that will be of interest to the greatest number of visitors. My guess would be that the AR stuff only appeals to a minority of users. However, for that smaller subset, they already know all of the regular stuff, so the ONLY things of interest are the AR items. Contributors tend to focus on the things that are of interest to themselves, which is fine, as long as someone else will find it interesting. However, with so few contributors currently, my own priority is to focus on the basics - primarily the contents of the very earliest issues, as those are often of high interest to Legion fans who have never read them. Also, between canon, cameos, reprints, solo appearances, etc, there are well over 1000 issues to chronicle, and I'm trying to knock out cover images for as many of them as possible. --Gopher 18:44, 26 August 2006 (PDT)

Different methods for attacking the beast, I guess. After getting my feet wet by adding to a few existing issues, my strategy was to start at the beginning and work my way through, issue by issue. Naturally, that meant starting with a few Elseworld and AR items. However, if you take a deep breath, by the time you exhale I should be hot and heavy into the main issues. ;)

As far as the orphan page, I'll try to be sure to make sure something links to any new page I add. I suspect that will be an issue until we get into the wiki project a bit. Unfortunatly, there seems to be no way for me to add an Elseworlds catagory to the main page, or to the eras navigation box at left. That means, so far as I can tell, one has to start someplace else and click on the catagories at the bottom of a page in order to get high enough in the hierarchy to come back down to Elseworlds issues. Same is true for finding creators and disambiguation tables. Seems a tad counter-intuitive to me, but I imagine surfing info will get easier as we all add to the wiki over time.

Thanks for all the other tips. Very helpful. I'll do my best to not cause too much havoc.Duke 04:23, 27 August 2006 (PDT)

It takes a little while to learn the conventions, but the most important thing is that you are contributing to the Wiki. The whole nature of the way wiki's work is that anything you do add will probably be changed dozens of times by dozens of other people in the future. Many of our current "conventions" are still being invented on a daily basis, and now that you are involved, you can be a part of that conversation. There is realy no right or wrong approach, although ultimately the Sysops will have the final say.

The main thing is not to get too hung up on if those conventions are different from the way you think they should be. If you see a way to make something better, build it or suggest it. If after discussion things dont go your way, life goes on. The important thing is that we will still go on creating something large and wonderful. There was at least one contributor who go so caught up in not agreeing with the conventions that he stopped contributing, which is really a shame. He couldn't handle being "wrong", so now he wont be part of making the Wiki happen.

By all means, create some havoc, as long as the wiki is growing and improving as you do so. The first couple of weeks that I was involved, Reboot had to fix almost every edit that I made, but with each change, I "got it" it little more clearly. The best way to learn is to make mistakes and learn from them. So get out there and make mistakes - it'll start to click soon.

You're absolutely right on creators and Disambiguation tables - they are not easy to find, because they didn't exist a month ago and they have not been fully incorprated yet. We will need to build more resources to help new users to find the info they need. Perhaps you can help us do that! --Gopher 05:12, 27 August 2006 (PDT)

Couple more tips

Here's a couple more ideas as you get used to Wiki code:

• Other than the capitalization of the first letter in a link/page name, even the slightest difference in spelling will generate a new page name. So, [[Sample page]] and [[sample page]] will link to the same page, but [[Sample page]] and [[Sample Page]] are two different pages. I've noticed a couple of links you have added include a comma within the link - [[Al Plastino,]] instead of [[Al Plastino]]. When an Al Plastino page is created, your link with the comma will not link properly to it.

• Also, its possible to have text display for a link that reads differently than the actual name of the page. The format for doing this is as follows:

For the following link, [[Sample page|Alternate text]], "Alternate text" will display on the page, but it will link to the page "Sample page".

• One common usage for the above code is the way we typically display comic issue names. An example is [[Superboy v1 147|''Superboy'' v1 #147]]. This allows us to keep the name of the page itself in a simple format (Superboy v1 147), but display it more appropriately on the page itself (Superboy v1 #147), with the name of the magazine italicized but the number, which is not part of the name not italicized. This also allows us to display the # sign without further complication the linked page name.

• In case you didn't notice, two single quotes around text produces italics, three gives you bold, and five gives you bold italic. Four single quotes is just 'bold with an extra single quote'. Look at the code for this section to see the examples in action.

• If you want to display Wiki code like the links I used above, simply place <nowiki> and </nowiki> before and after the section of text to should display the code. Using the nowiki tags, I can display [[Adventure Comics 247]], without them, it appears as Adventure Comics 247. Look at the code for this page to see the nowiki method in action.

• You've probably noticed, but using the ~~~~ in the Summary description doesn't display your signature. It only works within the context of page text.

Hope those are helpful. I'll throw more ideas out there as I think of them. I think I'm going to put together a simple first time Legion Wiki user page to help bring new contributors up to speed quickly. --Gopher 20:34, 26 August 2006 (PDT)