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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)

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)