Legion Wiki talk:Community Portal

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Redesigning the Legion Wiki Structure

I've been giving some thought to the structural thoughts you [CG] e-mailed me during the downtime, and doing some searching around. What if we adopted a "continuity family" model like the Transformers Wiki, which seems to be the sort of thing you were aiming at.

In that model, we'd have four major continuity families (the exact names are up for debate, of course, but this gives the gist):

• Preboot (=Pre-Crisis, Post-Crisis, Glorithverse, Lightning Saga (aka Post-IC/Earth-0), Adult Legion and some small "imaginary story"-type "microcontinuities")
• Postboot (=Post-Zero Hour, Post-IC/Earth-247, Universe Ablaze-verse, Dead Earth futures, One Million, the future Thom goes to and becomes Danny Blaine, and probably a few other shards)
• Threeboot (=Post-IC/Earth-Prime and possibly some microcontinuities)
• Cartoons (LSH cartoon and DCAU)

There'd also be a few other leftover Elseworlds that don't fit into any of those - Superboy's Legion springs to mind, as does the Arthurian Legionnaires Annual - but they can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis; and a few anomalies (mostly from the present day) that don't quite work as any of these, but that would be the major structure.

If we went this road, there'd be one Preboot page for all the relevant characters, and an infobox for each of the major sections (covering their status in that version of continuity). Something along these lines (which is intended as a basic template, not a definitive page-structure).

There would be a need to maintain a separate structure to some extent, but a page like Timeline/Glorithverse, which deals with the revised continuity, could move to Timeline/Preboot/Glorithverse. Categories-by-era could mostly move to [[Category: * (Preboot)]] and the like. Also, there would be anomalies as I mentioned earlier, like Mon-El/Valor (Glorithverse Valor would actually sit far more comfortably in some ways on a page with Reboot M'Onel than with Preboot Mon-El).

Still, thoughts? - Reboot (SoM) talk page 15:11, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

This is very much in line with what I have been thinking, and your example page even moreso. Particularly with the Preboot family, while changes occurred because of a Crisis (or whatever), 90% of a given character's timeline remains the same. It makes sense that these be seen as a continuity, with changes noted as you describe in your example page. I also think that DC agrees with your basic groupings, as Legion of Three Worlds attests. Admittedly, there are a range of one-off stories that don't fit in anywhere, but I'm sure we can find somewhere to group those together. Smallvile comes to mind as another one that doesn't fit anywhere else.

One great advantage of this structure is that we are less likely to need to keep adding more and more differentiations as time goes only. New twists will probably fit into an existing time-line somewhere. I also think it will be more easily grasped by newbies. Assuming we follow this path, might I suggest we map this out a bit more fully to try to shake out any potential issues before we start building pages? It sounds as though you have already thought about a lot of the necessary angles, but it might be useful to list as many of the pieces as we can up-front to help anticipate and avoid issues. Also, we don't need to make this transition immediately. We can take a little time to figure out how we want to name the families, etc.

Gopher 02:42, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

The problem I keep coming up against with this is the 20th/21st century stuff, and how to classify that. Mon-El/Valor/M'Onel/Mon-El is probably the most obvious one, but Superman family stuff in general (which has been rebooted to some degree at least five times in the past ten years, Kon-El getting a new & irreconcilable origin, etc) is itchy, and I'm not sure how to break that down alongside the 30th/31st century. Any specific thoughts on that? - Reboot (SoM) talk page 14:54, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

For those instances, we may need to write the page from a real world point of view and discuss the conflicts and overlaps on the page. Its possible that some pages may not be able to be classified neatly into one or the other family - one option would be to categorize in both/all and then simply point out which pieces fit where. Not the greatest solution, but would only apply to a few pages out of hundreds.

I think we should set up a working page/set of pages to start listing out what will go where, discuss names of the eras/families, determine a new coloring scheme, and the like. As issues like Mon-El come up, we can dissect the pieces and see exactly how big the issue is, what parts obviously go in one category or another, etc. Gopher 20:56, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

A first step

One simple first change we can make to get the redesign started is addressing what we currently have tagged as "Post-Infinite Crisis" and "Lightning Saga". The way things have turned out, our Lightning Saga items would be more properly categorized as "Post-Infinite Crisis." The Threeboot stories have now been explained as taking place on Earth Prime. We could easily redirect the current Lightning Saga items to Post-IC. However, what do we want to call the Threeboot Legion? Earth Prime? Post-IC/Earth Prime? While we don't have to follow the pattern, a logical extension of that reasoning would be to move Post-Zero Hour to Earth-247. However, that starts to get into what we had wanted to avoid - labeling various legions by their Earths, and I would rather keep Post-ZH. For now, I'd rather table that discussion and just get Lightning Saga/Threeboot situated. Any thoughts on naming the Threeboot/Earth Prime "era"? -- Gopher 14:09, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

This wouldn't move us along, though - it'd be a sideways step rather than forward. We'd need to move/rename/change everything all over again as and when we DO a proper restructure. However, if we *need* something right now (i.e., based on the current structure), it has to be Post-IC/Earth-Prime and Post-IC/Earth-0.

Since "Earth-247" only came into existence during Infinite Crisis, we not only can't move the Post-ZH pages there, it'd be inaccurate to do so. If you look at a meta-timeline (i.e., publication order), it exists... oh... zero hour; kingdom, our worlds at war, superman 200, infinite crisis mk1 ... three partial reboots, including at least one sidestep, down the line from ZHville. - Reboot (SoM) talk page 16:06, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

The Big Step

Okay, here's what, AFAICS, we would need to do for the Big Restructure. They're not prioritised by criticality (some are fairly trivial), just by a rough chronological order:

1. Prepwork
   1. Make any changes to the new page template I posted above that we deem necessary, and lock it down for now.
   2. Figure out what to do about Valor and any other edge cases, even if it's to raincheck that decision for now
   3. Decide what to call the Preboot/Retroboot, Postboot/Reboot, Threeboot and Cartoons/Other Media continuity families
   4. Decide what to do about the colour key - do we base each continuity family on a single colour [meaning the preboot-derived families, rather than being red (Pre-Crisis), blue (Post-Crisis), lilac (Glorithverse) and reddish-brown (Lightning Saga) would all become some shade of red. Postboot (green), threeboot (yellow-brown) and cartoons (shades of orange) could stay as they are.] or leave them as they are?
   5. Anything else that hasn't occurred to me, but which you point out, or which I think of before we get started :)

1. Moving
   1. Categories - any category with an era in its name would have to be renamed, and all pages in those categories would have to be moved (for this to be practically accomplished, we'll need some sort of bot, or at least a semi-automated tool like AutoWikiBrowser [which I tried back in the Scott days and couldn't get to work with this wiki - but I haven't tried it again since the reboot]. It wouldn't really be manually doable).
   2. Most /Pre-Crisis, /Post-Crisis, /Glorithverse and /Lightning Saga pages would need to be merged, most of the remainder would need the continuity family stuck in the middle (e.g., Timeline/Preboot/Pre-Crisis), and the edge cases (1.1 above) would need to be dealt with. We'd also need to move the other pages to the new continuity family names.
   3. The LPH would need to be updated to reflect the name, link and colour changes.

Anything I've missed? - Reboot (SoM) talk page 16:24, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Original art from interior pages

In the past we have not uploaded many images of black and white artwork from interior comic pages, although we do have a fair smattering of cover artwork. This is probably because not many people have access to originals, so the available images ate few. However, I just bought a page of Cinar art from LSHv6 #1, and it has increased my interest in that area. I met a collector online who owns more than 100 pages of Legion interior art, representing a wide variety of artists. He says he knows four other collectors who each own over 1,000. It would be very cool to start a comprehensive gallery of interior art pages, and if even one of this guys friends participated, we could have a pretty decent gallery.

Here are my questions, if anyone knows the answers. Are there any legal issues with posting so many interior pages? Is it any different from posting B&W cover art? Does the fact that the owners of the originals donated the images make any difference? Do you think it is likely that DC would take notice and disapprove? Assuming no legal issues, is it something you would be interested in adding to the wiki? At present, I don't know if anyone other than the initial guy I talked to are willing to participate, but what are your thoughts on this topic in general? Over time, we could assemble quite a bit of the Legion's interior art in one place, something that does not exist anywhere for any series, as far as I know.

Gopher 08:43, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

I've got quite a lot of scans (somewhere around a hundred, although of variable quality) from the LegionPics "rescue" effort.

The owners of the original pages are, except insofar as they'd be willing to donate time & effort to scan, irrelevant from the "legally is it okay" perspective - when they buy the pages, they explicitly buy ONLY the physical art and no other rights. DC are the only Important party in that sense, and I honestly don't know on that score. I suspect it may depend on what percentage of an issue is scanned, how many issues, that sort of thing. - Reboot (SoM) talk page 15:12, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Do you think we could get away with posting all 39 pages from LSHv6 #1? Cinar is selling them the day the issues are released, and the art vendor posts very nice scans of every page. Even if we can't get away with full issues, I think I'm going to upload quite a few more pages. I think I have downloaded about 100, which hopefully aren't the same 100 you rescued. Most of these are one or two pages to a given issue, so hopefully that won't draw any unwanted attention. If it becomes a problem, we can always take them down. --Gopher 22:16, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

I think that, shy of DC never noticing, there's no way in the world we'd get away with posting the whole of an issue (let alone a current one) and I expect that the artist's dealer will have to take them down either as they're sold or within a reasonable time thereafter. - Reboot (SoM) talk page 00:32, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Images to reupload

I've started a list of images which are on the server, but aren't in the database, here: /Images to reupload - Reboot (SoM) talk page 22:12, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

This is auto-generated? I'm working my way backwards through the LPH, which will eliminate a good percentage, but it will be good to know where the other holes lie. --Gopher 23:25, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Most assuredly not auto-generated (if only I had a bot...). Me going through all the folders (under /0/ so far), checking which filenames generate a redlink and pasting those into that list.

Once you have the link, you can paste them into the URL field on Special:Upload - I checked by doing it on File:Action860A.jpg, and it worked. That's about the limit of the labour-saving. - Reboot (SoM) talk page 23:53, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Attracting more contributors

I'd like to make a concerted effort to attract more users who contribute to the site on a regular basis. I would be interested in your thoughts - what pieces do you think will work, what should we rethink? Here's what I am envisioning:

1. Preparing the site - If we get an influx of new people involved who begin editing pages on a regular basis, it will be helpful if we have resources in place to guide them in the right direction. These should include the following:
   1. An immediate landing page to direct people who have been invited to participate. As described below, I plan to email, post messages on blogs/discussion groups/facebook, and possibly even take out inexpensive classified ads in comic related magazines. Having a landing page where they can find out how to get involved quickly and easily, with a URL that we can use in emails/postings/ads will help. A possible name for the landing page could be Calling all Legion experts.
   2. Pages that explain policies, naming conventions, where to find things, suggestions for pages to work on. We already have much of this in place, but I'd like to make sure we cover as many bases as possible.
   3. The Community portal will be much more important if we have an actual community. We will need a way to get word out to new people in an easy manner, and having announcement "headlines" on the main page linking to more detailed versions on the top Community portal page will probably do the trick. I'd also like to see the Community portal discussion pages turn into a categorized series of pages with common topics, as I have already started. I called these pages "archives" but I don't want to convey the idea that no one can continue the conversation there. This still needs some thinking about how best to organize/name.
2. Once the site is prepared to more easily get our new experts up and running, I'd like to begin reaching out to Legion enthusiasts in as many targeted ways that we can think of.
   1. Where possible, I'd like to find emails for people who have demonstrated their love for the Legion and send them a personalized message. Heck, I'll call them to discuss if they are open to it.
   2. Another good source will be to reach out to people who currently run Legion-related blogs or websites. They may not be willing or able to devote time to the wiki themselves, but they might be able to help us out by posting announcements or updates about us. I think this would work best if we discuss by email first and then plan to a specific "roll out" of the open call for Legion experts. If this message appears everywhere at once, especially if we can get the bloggers to put their weight behind it, this could really get some initial momentum. If we can send out "news releases" every 3 months or so with updates on our progress, this would keep the wiki in the fan consciousness and possibly renew the supply of contributors periodically.
   3. Slightly less personal, but a great source of leads would be regular, planned posts on message boards. I know that many of the people who frequent these boards are probably already aware of the wiki, but I'd like to encourage our contributors to link back to the wiki as often as possible. For instance, I occasionally post questions or answers to a trivia thread on the DC boards. If it is even remotely possible, when I give an answer to a trivia question, I try to link back to a wiki page that relates to the answer. Sometimes it prompts me to edit the page again, and perhaps our newbies would do the same. In making an initial call for "Legion experts," I think it will work better to encourage them to contact me (or someone else) personally for information, rather than simply explain it on the message board. My observation is that most people are very unmotivated to do anything that involves work from a posted message, but if we can engage them on a more personal level, they might be more inclined to get involved.
   4. Lastly, I would also like to do some inexpensive advertising in comic-related periodicals. This will find people who aren't aware of blogs or boards. It also adds further credence to the seriousness of our effort to develop the wiki.
3. Once people are here, we need to implement strategies to get them involved and encourage more frequent contributions. Assuming that we get at least a few people, here are a couple of ideas how:
   1. We could organize the people into teams that focus on specific eras. Silver Age, Disco Legion, Reboot, Threeboot, whatever. Most people have a particular period of which they are most fond, so they might feel more connection if that becomes their primary stomping grounds here. They would of course be free to edit any page, but we can encourage the teams to develop the pages that relate to their favorite characters/issues.
   2. Once teams start to develop, appoint a team leader, based upon who is generating the most new content. The leader's job is to coordinate the teams efforts, find more contributors who are familiar with that era, and make sure the team is building content that conforms to wiki standards.
   3. Assuming people begin generating content, we could make regular announcements to recognize users who have contributed the most in a given week or month (depends how frequent the edits become). We could also develop some type of contest to encourage a rivalry between the teams.
   4. Our job as Admins is to make sure that wiki is developed correctly, to moderate discussions between users which encourage continued contribution but keep content conforming to wiki standards. At this point in our development, getting more contributors up and running and regularly editing pages is more important than if the content is 100% on target. As long as they are involved, we can continue to increase our wiki content. If they quit, we lose everything that they might have added. We'll need to find ways to resolve their differences of opinion that still keep them wanting to be a part of the wiki.
   5. We could possibly develop another user type or two with increased levels of permissions. Contributors who reach some threshold of contribution would be granted the greater authority.

This is a departure from what we have done in the past, but I think we have shot at finding a good handful of contributors. If we can get even a half dozen people to contribute regularly, the greater value of the wiki due to greater amounts of information are likely to attract more contributors. With just a couple of people adding content, I don't believe we will ever achieve the critical mass necessary to cover something as big as the Legion with any depth or completeness.

However, I think that its important that we develop this plan before reaching out to new contributors. If we don't have our act together, people will not get involved or leave soon after joining. Our priorities now are to develop the plan, develop guidelines for the language used when we do reach out to people, contact key fans on blogs to get an idea of the support level, get our landing pages and explanations in place, and start collecting a list of "experts" and places where we want to find new contributors.

So, thoughts? - Gopher 20:53, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

The creation of this topic may have been lost in other changes for the day, so I'm editing it again so it will stand out. Thoughts? - Gopher 04:08, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I missed this when you first posted it - most of it I agree with, but don't have time to reply to fully just now. One thing that kind of gets me that you haven't mentioned is licencing - we've never bothered to say "you licence your contributions under (GDFL/CC-BY-SA/other)" like most wikis, and I wonder if that's hurting us [and of course, we can't retrospectively impose a licence without the agreement of contributors].

[PS: Sorry I haven't been around much - I've been having a LOT of computer problems on the internet-access PC, so I've basically been using my phone only to access the internet, which doesn't give much chance to do lots of editing] - Reboot (SoM) talk page 15:19, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

On the licensing, a huge amount of the data we have was submitted by either you or me, especially after losing the 2008-2010 data. We could talk to Michael Grabois, our other primary contributor, and beyond that we're only talking about 20-30 pages of data out of a couple thousand. We should get the licensing language posted, though. Can we adapt that from an existing source?

No worries on "attendance." I've been out of town for the last few days, so no real activity from me either. I just bumped the topic because I thought it probably got lost. I'm hoping for some feedback from Nightcrawler, and I'd like to start putting pieces in place to move it forward. I will start working on some text for a basic email/posting to blog owners/etc. - Gopher 12:30, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Sorry. This is at least the third attempt to respond to this due to technical and other obligations preventing me from finishing a response. Craig, you've been doing an excellent job updating the wiki and working hard almost everyday. I agree with your ideas except maybe the ads as I'm not sure the investment would be worth it. Personally, my bandwidth is rather limited, but I'm always up for adding features or making any server/software related changes. Just let me know what you need from me. --Nightcrawler 01:41, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

I would only consider advertising after all others have been pretty well explored. However, I do think it might connect us with some people who aren't already aware of the wiki. I think the one thing we can all do, regardless of our time, is to encourage other people to get involved - talk it up when chatting with other Legion fans - either live or online. -- Gopher 13:15, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I added a link to LEGIONWIKI.COM to the flier we were giving out at the San Diego Comic-Con last week. Hopefully, people have at least come by to check the Wiki out. Since we have a confirmed table for next year's Con, I want make some printed booklets that celebrate the 50th anniversary of Star Boy, Triplicate Girl, Phantom Girl, Brainiac 5, Shrinking Violet, Sun Boy, Bouncing Boy, the Super-Pets, Mon-El, Pete Ross, Dev-Em and the Adult LSV in 2011 (idea by Kent [Sean Springer] of Legion World). I'd also like to do a retro one for 2008's Legion/Founders and 2010's Chameleon Boy, Colossal Boy and Invisible Kid. We can promote the Wiki throughout the booklets and at the table.

It would be great if Craig or Gerard could make it as well. I know it's an expensive trip. --Nightcrawler 20:51, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't see any way I'm going to be able to afford a SDCC trip any time soon, sorry :(. - Reboot (SoM) talk page 01:17, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't think a trip to San Diego is in the cards for me either, but who knows? Between work and school, being able to get away for a few days may be a stretch. As we get closer to the dates, I'll see if its feasible. However, maybe we could coordinate activities on thwe wiki with what you would like to do at the con. If nothing else, we can cross-promote. -- Gopher 13:15, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Belated reply...

Again, sorry for my lack of contributions, and not getting to this before now. :(

Section 1 ("Preparing the site") is fairly indisputable overall - like NC, I'm not sure about the cost-effectiveness of paying for ads, but the gist of it all is valid. The only other point I'm wondering about is the CP archiving - other wikis, from what I can see, tend to archive strictly by the last-posted date of sections, and just number them (so /Archive01, /Archive02, etc). And then lock the archives, telling people to post to the main CP talk page if they want to discuss anything therein.

Section 2... there's a degree of catch-22 about attracting people. People tend to be attracted to editing busy wikis with a lot of content already in place, either making it better or filling in the gaps rather than building the basic structure. Which puts a high barrier on getting the contributors to make it that way. One thing I'd wonder about in this respect is about dead LSH web resources - either ones which haven't been updated in a looong time, or ones which have fallen offline but people (or the Wayback Machine) may still have archives of. Even something as major as the Help File hasn't been updated since the end of Legion Lost, and I can't actually open it as-intended on my Windows 7 laptop (since Microsoft dropped support for the *.hlp format with Vista). Is there any way we could find/get permission to incorporate some of these into the wiki to (a) restore access to/update them and (b) help add to our content and make us more attractive to potential editors. [This would, of course, require the licensing issue above to be decided upon].

Section 3... I'm not 100% convinced about arranging people into teams or so forth. Encourage it if it happens naturally, certainly, but that's the sort of thing that only becomes productive when you hit at least a couple of dozen contributors. If anything, it might put off people from editing the areas other people have "dibbed". - Reboot (SoM) talk page 01:17, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Section 1: I'm not that attached to archiving by subject, just thought it would be more useful in creating a meaningful archive. However, it takes more energy to move topics individualy, and that energy is better spent at present on creating meaningful content. What if we archived by month or quarter, similar to archive pages on many blogs? Achive01 doesn't tell me much other than that it is the first archive page. But June2010 or whatever at least gives me an idea of how old it is.

Section 2: I've been focusing in the last week or two in creating pages that other people can plug into. I think in particular, people are interested in pages about specific issues or specific characters, so I'm creating the basic shells for issue pages. I was thinking about adding some text in the synopsis section to the effect of "You can help expand Legion Wiki by adding a story description or other details. Click here to edit this page." Something like a stub message. Also, I'd like to encourage people to add their comments about given issues on the discussion pages. This might be a way for people to get involved without feeling like they have to create "official" sounding content - they can simply express their feelings about the issue. There are a couple of issue pages with "Critique" sections, which would be more appropriate on the discussion pages. To encourage issue discussions, I'm thinking about putting a descriptive link on the main page. We could also add links to the discussion pages to Legion World, the DC Legion Forum, etc.

As for defunct Legion resources on the web, we could at least try reaching out to some of their creators and see if they are interested. As long as they are clear that their content will be shared... ~If we could get even one of those old enthusiasts on board, it would give us a big boost.

Section 3: My vision for the team concept is not so much a way to manage who does what as a way to recruit contributors. Kind of a divide and conquer approach to find specific people to work on each of the "eras". Its also possible that people might be more regularly involved if they felt they were part of a team. It can seem overwhelming to try to tackle all of the content we have ahead of us, but contributing as part of a team with a specific plan to get to the end result may be less daunting. Perhaps instead of multiple teams, we just approach it as one big team who is working toward a unified goal and a blueprint for how to get there.

-- Gopher 13:03, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Licensing

copied from above

One thing that kind of gets me that you haven't mentioned is licencing - we've never bothered to say "you licence your contributions under (GDFL/CC-BY-SA/other)" like most wikis, and I wonder if that's hurting us [and of course, we can't retrospectively impose a licence without the agreement of contributors]. - Reboot (SoM) talk page 15:19, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

On the licensing, a huge amount of the data we have was submitted by either you or me, especially after losing the 2008-2010 data. We could talk to Michael Grabois, our other primary contributor, and beyond that we're only talking about 20-30 pages of data out of a couple thousand. We should get the licensing language posted, though. Can we adapt that from an existing source?- Gopher 12:30, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, Duke (LWorld's Portfolio Boy) contributed the seed of the LPH data from about 1986 back, as I recall.

On the license, Wikipedia switched to CC-BY-SA 3.0 a while back, when the new version of the GFDL (their previous licence) allowed it for a limited period, while Memory Alpha (the main Star Trek wiki) uses CC-BY-NC 2.5. There's variety of Creative Commons licences alone though, and there are other licensing schema available. If Wikipedia compatibility is important, it has to be CC-BY-SA, but otherwise we can pick anything we can get MG and PoFo to agree to.

Frankly, I never brought the subject up because it's so complicated! - Reboot (SoM) talk page 01:17, 2 August 2010 (UTC)