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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)

I am new here and really only signed up to make a few minor changes, but I'd suggest organizing on the basis of what a reader would need if he wants to find out what happened to some group. Therefore, reboot and Earth-247 should be a single set of pages even though Earth-247 was retconned into existence much later. It's true that the name "Eartj-247" might technically be inaccurate, so call it "Reboot" with a note saying that after Infinite Crisis, reboot is now considered to be from Earth-247. Arromdee 19:57, 3 September 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 :)
2. 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 (1.2 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)

Its been a few months since the post above, but prompted by the conversation on Talk:Action_Comics_864, here are my thoughts on the above.

1.1 Your proposed template will work fine. If we find that it needs other parts, we can always add them later. I may begin building a sample page to get a better feel for what else I might like to see on it.

1.2 I would suggest we hold off on the edge cases for now, although let's set up a page to start listing what they are and begin discssing options.

1.3 This looks like the next major set of decisions to make. I would prefer something like Original or Classic for the Pre-Crisis through Retroboot timelines. If there is away to avoid naming them without reference to the "booting", I would prefer that, although I am at a loss for constructive alternatives. Does everyone know what the Reboot and Threeboot are? Does it matter whether they do or not?

1.4 I think having each family be unified with a common color scheme would make sense. If we stick with 4 basic families, I'd like to see primary/secondary colors: red, blue, green - yellow isn't the greatest so maybe orange. Variations within a color family can distinguish the various parts.

We can deal with Part 2 of your outline once the decisions for Part 1 are in place. It will be good to get moving on this. --Gopher 23:37, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

1.3: Well, we named the versions originally for in-universe pointers, and got into a complete tangle over it with the Post-Infinite Crisis [Lightning Saga/threeboot/Earth-0/Earth-Prime] mess. This time, I'd rather just go for fandom names shy of a better alternative (on whether people will know what those mean - we can put links in the infobox, main page and maybe sidebar to make sure people do) - "Classic" is fraught with POV, and "Original"... well, at some point it definitely stopped being the original (definitely by Glorithverse, arguably after Crisis, and there's a school of thought that says it stopped being the original as soon as they retconned "Lightning Boy" and the founders' original costumes)

1.4: Wouldn't changing the colours for Postboot/Post-ZH [green], Threeboot/Earth-Prime [dark gold] and Cartoons/LSH cartoon & Cartoons/DCAU [orange] be more trouble than it's worth? Of them, only Threeboot's not that ideal and for Postboot/Earth-247, we can just use a darker green. [If you wanted to change them anyway that said, the way to do it would be enter the colours with class names into the MediaWiki:Common.css stylesheet, which would mean we could enter something comprehensible like 'class="threeboot_heading' rather than 'bgcolor="#96a02c"'. Having admin powers gives us options like that we didn't have first time around.]

And, as I said on your user talk, AWB now works, which will make repetitive tasks like recategorising, changing colours, etc that bit less intolerable. - Reboot (SoM) talk page 01:58, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

1.3 Fan names do have their advantages, although there is a wide variety of what people call the various eras. My one suggestion over Preboot/Postboot/Threeboot is possibly Preboot/Reboot/Threeboot. Having the three main eras names rhyme is a bit easier to remember and seems like more of a unified whole. However, I'm good with Postboot too. In the end, its not that big a deal what names we use - most people will probably put much less thought into it than we will. The one minor point that irks me is defining the first era by an event in 1994, when the franchise existed for 36 years without any reference to it. However, the same could be said of Pre-Crisis or many other major changing points since it became acceptable for publishers to completely retconn continuities. The important thing is for users to understand what we're talking about. We may want a different name than Cartoons, since that seems like a good era for Smalville as well. Non-Print Media is a bit cumbersome, but if we could come up with something similar, that would be more accurate than Cartoons.

1.4 My preference would be to change the Threeboot color scheme to blue, with Preboot being various shades of red, Reboot various shades of green and Cartoons orange. That keeps most colors the same, with Threeboot having the fewest pages that will need changing. Do you think Elseworlds could be a component of each of the main eras (redish-grey, greenish-grey, etc)? There might be a few examples that would behard to place, but most Elseworlds versions take an easily-identified departure from one of the main eras.

Still haven't installed AWB, but my computer is fixed, so I'll do so soon. Sounds like a good tool.

Your work so far with CSS and the character page template looks great. I like the infobox with rounded corners. Also, since most of these pages will have multiple era sections, its an excellent opportunity to use the random-image code that I've been using for issue pages with multiple covers. Do you have a set image size you are targeting for the main character images? Rotating the images will look much better if they are all the same size. I would also be interested in developing a series of small character head-shot tiles for use in multiple locations around the site. Around 60x60 or 80x80?

--Gopher 07:03, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Re: Preboot/Reboot/Threeboot

Probably should use "Reboot", yeah. I was reluctant to pick that because it also describes the event, but I suppose it *is* the term used most these days...

As for defining the Pre-Crisis/etc set of continuity by the first reboot... well, as you say, the important part is for users to understand. "Preboot" isn't an ideal term, I admit - we're including the v6 team in it, and that exists after various reboots (even if it is based on the team which existed before the 1989-90 "soft" reboot), after all - but "Original"'s hardly better in that respect, and I can't think of another "neutral" term we could use.

Re: Cartoons

I take your point Re: Smallville. I'd like to keep it to one word though. One to think over, I suppose.

Re: Colours

I actually had a rethink on that, which is partially visible on the mock-infobox image and embedded in the functional mock's code (but not the table at the top of my sandbox, which was a proof of concept using the "old" colours). That rethink came in three parts:

1. Yeah, I flipped "threeboot" to blue. Given the wiki's skin, it makes sense to keep yellow/gold/black for general use (i.e., non-era related stuff) anyway.
2. Use one and only one dark/intense shade of the colour for heading-background use in each "family", as with the dark green on the B5 mock-infobox.
3. Represent the continuity streams within that by the (light) shade of the header text in infoboxes (i.e., the green used for "BRAINIAC 5") - which will also (continue to, in the case of Pre-Crisis/Post-ZH/the cartoons) be used for the basis of the colour-bgs where needed in the LPH.

Re: Elseworlds

Well, any that obviously fit in one continuity family (like Adult Legion for preboot, or Universe Ablaze for postboot/Reboot) can go on the "family" page, as in the template. For vaguer ones like Superboy's Legion, they should stay grey... But I'm not sure whether they should just have individual "list of characters" pages, or we should bundle their characters together on pages like "Brainiac 5/Elseworlds".

Re: Infobox

Glad you like it :). Some tweaking to go yet, both in the code and in the look - I just found a computer still running IE6. Ow. I knew it wouldn't look great - even IE8 doesn't support rounded corners, for heaven's sake - but the lack-of-colour in the headers of the LPH and Infobox templates needs to be addressed for legibility, and I'd like to know where the hell the navy blue in the sidebar is coming from... [also, note to self, drop Verdana as the main backup font for the headers...]

Re: Infobox images

Fixing a maximum size would be simple... IF we go through and edit all the pages, since we'd need to strip (e.g.) "[[Image:Brainiac5Coipel.png|250px]]" down to "File:Brainiac5Coipel.png" or just "Brainiac5Coipel.png". I was trying to make the new infobox style something that wouldn't require that sort of editing - but then, that B5 image itself sits a bit big at the moment...

Re: Character Icons

Size-wise depends on what sort of thing you'd use them for, I suppose. What did you have in mind?

Did I miss anything in the reply? :) - Reboot (SoM) talk page 14:47, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Done some more CSS/etc work (cf original infoboxen). Any suggestions/comments? - Reboot (SoM) talk page 16:18, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Your development on the CSS and infboxes looks great. The one piece that I don't think works is the varying text color for the headings within the same era-family. Its a little better for the infoboxes, where the text is larger, but in your "wikitable2" example, its difficult to tell the difference between some of the sub-eras. In some cases, its difficult to read the text when the colors are too close. In general, though, we are moving in the right direction. Having everything defined in CSS will eliminate the need to look up the codes all the time, and we can simply substitute the proper era-name for the colors. And should we need to shift the colors around because DC introduces a new era twist, we can simply change the CSS values and all the pages will be updated (at least those using the CSS values).

How would you like to handle L.E.G.I.O.N.? Should it have its own colors or should we apply the era colors from the regular Legion titles? We could also consider white (or black) background with text in the regular era colors.

--Gopher 17:45, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Re: text colour

Well, there's two points in your first paragraph. To take the second one first... legibility-wise, the only one I thought was pushing it was LSH cartoon. Which ones are you having trouble reading?

As for distinguishability... well, the "LEGION PUBLICATION HISTORY" in the LPH template was about the smallest text size I was thinking of using for this (the table's font size was just to fit it all on a page) - if you zoom in a couple of levels, does that help? Otherwise, I can try and push the differences in hue between background and text a bit further and see how that turns out.

Re: L.E.G.I.O.N.

Honestly... I'd completely forgotten about L.E.G.I.O.N. :). The problem with L.E.G.I.O.N. is that most of our "edge cases" come from 20th-century-set comics in that period between Invasion and D.O.A. - since it made a lot of changes to the pre-Glorithverse "historical" status quo of that period, and mostly weren't changed further in Zero Hour - and L.E.G.I.O.N.'s central to all that (especially with Valor & Phase). I'm really not sure what to do there. - Reboot (SoM) talk page 17:35, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

So, just verifying... New character page links would be like:

• [[Lightning Lad/Preboot|Lightning Lad]]
• [[Lightning Lad/Reboot|Lightning Lad]]
• [[Lightning Lad/Threeboot|Lightning Lad]]

--Gopher 14:52, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

No... postboot-Garth was never "Lightning Lad" :p

That glitch notwithstanding... that's basically* a "yep" unless we come up with "better" family-names than Preboot/Reboot/Threeboot [Preboot's kind of beginning to bug me since it's on both sides of the "boot"s now].

[*Basically = we may want to link to specific sections - e.g., Saturn Girl/Preboot#Post-Crisis - in some specific instances, but section-linking's optional].

P.S., Would we be better moving this to somewhere like [[Legion Wiki:Restructuring]]? - Reboot (SoM) talk page 17:35, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

The revised infoboxes

Should I start changing these over? I wanted to do everything in one go, as a sort of "big bang" change, but I haven't had the time to work on them recently - would it be better to phase all the changes in instead? - Reboot (SoM) talk page 00:08, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm all for starting, whether it's in phases or in one big effort. If phases will work better for you, then by all means, do what fits your schedule. I'm pretty used to doing a little each day on larger efforts, such as my current push to create pages for all key issues. At first it doesn't seem like much, but gradually it makes a big differene. What phases are you envisioning? - Gopher 07:56, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Phase 1 would just be style-related - switching the infoboxes, then simpler templates like the LPH navbox, then more complex templates like prevnext to the new style I showed you. Once that's done, we can start the real job of restructuring... - Reboot (SoM) talk page 17:41, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

I made some changes to Phantom Girl/Pre-Crisis, which we can move to Phantom Girl/Preboot at some point. I'm going to continue to flesh out this page as an exercise in figuring out what pieces and parts should be common to all member pages. In regard to the new infoboxes, I was thinking about the fact that they currently include links to individual pages for Pre-Crisis, Post-Crisis, etc. Do you see these going away eventually, with just the basic era family page links remaining, or do you want to link to sections within each of those pages. The way I have currently structured the prototype Phantom Girl page, the sub-eras are listed under the Biography section, since origin, powers, family, etc. should be fairly consistent for each. I guess we could add a "Reboot reference kit" type section to point out differences between facts and events in sub-eras. --Gopher 14:34, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Don't have time for a full response (I saw this a few days ago, but life has been hectic, and I don't want to leave it apparently-ignored any longer), but on this bit:

I was thinking about the fact that they currently include links to individual pages for Pre-Crisis, Post-Crisis, etc. Do you see these going away eventually, with just the basic era family page links remaining, or do you want to link to sections within each of those pages.

My intention was to replace those with tabs on the top (see picture, right), but I had a lot of trouble actually DOING that. I left it the way it is as a sort of interim version (which is one of the reasons why I haven't progressed to changing all the others over...) - Reboot (SoM) talk page 00:18, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

That makes sense. I had forgotten the version with the tabs. OK, so the individual sub-era links will go away. Alright, I'll keep fleshing out the Phantom Girl page as a prototype. Hope life gets less hectic soon. -- Gopher 01:59, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

"One Month Later"

Okay, have some time tonight, so I (more-or-less) finished the Lost/Lost v1 switchover, and had a proper look at this. Warning: I'm tired, so I may ramble :). Re:

I made some changes to Phantom Girl/Pre-Crisis, which we can move to Phantom Girl/Preboot at some point. I'm going to continue to flesh out this page as an exercise in figuring out what pieces and parts should be common to all member pages. [...] The way I have currently structured the prototype Phantom Girl page, the sub-eras are listed under the Biography section, since origin, powers, family, etc. should be fairly consistent for each. I guess we could add a "Reboot reference kit" type section to point out differences between facts and events in sub-eras.

Hmmm... I see you've completely flipped the organisation from the template I suggested before. I can see some advantages to this, but the tricky parts come with (a) dealing with changes to continuity, which you've stuck well down the page/out of the road; (b) comics published in the last five months of 1989 (of which more below - granted, this is a tricky area all-round now) and (c) the SW6 Legionnaires, which you've placed level with Glorithverse and (d) and the minor/Elseworld continuities, which you appear to have stuck in with the "Reboot reference kit-type section" as a sub-heading.

The problem with trying to smooth over (a) is that there's a pair of forks in the road - if it hadn't been for the "retroboot" picking up after v3, it might be smoothable, but as it stands it needs to be dealt with head-on since there's going to be a "if you want the TMK stuff, next section/if you want the Geoff Johns stuff, two sections down" after v3 [This is also why I was thinking about going with an infobox per revision, since alliances/teams/etc can apply exclusively to 5YL or retroboot but not both, even without Crisis-related retcons]. And (b) relates closely to this, since it's actually a double fork in quick succession, not a single:

• Fork A: Straight after v3, GOTO retroboot
• Fork B1: "Five Years Later," after v4 #4, END
• Fork B2: "Five Years Later," after v4 #4, GOTO Glorithverse (via Mordruverse)

On that second fork, Tinya's actually a convenient example as she's one of our two major edge cases in this area (Lar being the other):

1. In Fork B1, that brief sliver of time between the publication of v4 #1 and the Mordruverse/Glorithverse double-reboot, she was sent to the past and became Phase (per Who's Who)
2. In Fork B2, the Glorithverse reality, she was (effectively) sent to the final moments before ZH, and Phase was actually her cousin
   • Phase continued to exist post-ZH, but the Enya reveal was wiped with the Reboot and she was ultimately revealed as a third of Apparition (the half-Carggite postboot Tinya) in the rebooted universe
3. In Fork A, the retroboot, she was never sent to the past at all since the timeline changed course long before that point, and who the hell knows who Phase is meant to have been (part of the post-IC Earth-247 Apparition?)

So, for Tinya, what heading does "she became Phase" come under?

(c) should be fairly simple - just shunt the SW6 header down a level - although there may need to be a similar sub-heading for the non-SW6 version.

(d) I'm not sure about. They don't need equal prominence, but they are a different thing from shifting realities. Something to think about later.

Also, finally, why'd you move XS and Gates over? Their E-247/retroboot versions are derivations of (if not quite identical to) their post-ZH selves, just as the other retroboot versions are derivative from their pre-5YL selves, ja? If we're going with "families". - Reboot (SoM) talk page 23:48, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

OK, I'm a few months late, but finally responding to your post. When I created my suggested version of the template above, I had completely forgotten that you had made one yourself, so please don't think that I was completely dismissing your version. I'm open to either structure or a combination of both.

In looking at the two versions, the one aspect that I would suggest we consider from my version is keeping the origin/powers/family descriptions in one place, not break them up into separate sections in each era. This really only matters for the Preboot characters, because the Reboot and Threeboot characters are far less complicated. While the various Preboot timelines have their differences, there is an underlying assumption that these characters are essentially the same people from era to era. In many cases, we do not know if new details are changes from a previous timeline or simply aspects of the story that were not revealed before. I can't think of a Legionnaire for whom their origin, powers, family members or physical description changed from one period to the next. I can see the value of pointing out new details that differ as new eras come into play, but for a new reader that is trying to make sense of everything, it might be easier to keep these pieces altogether in one place, rather than require them to hunt down the page to get the whole story. We could use language such as "In the Glorithverse era, we learn that Tinya ran away from home at an early age, etc etc.." If we are going to refer to those different eras, though, each page should have a brief section near the top that describes the different eras, a very simple explanation for how they flow/fit together, and a link to a more detailed page that discusses the eras in general.

For many characters, there are practically no differences from era to era, other than "current" story events. For these simpler cases, I think the page structure with the most basic layout and fewest sections makes the most sense. The majority of character background info that doesn't fit with the rest of the timelines occurs in the Glorithverse era. For example, the explanation that Lightning Lad has actually been Proty I in Garth's form ever since Garth died and was revived in the early Adventure days. For these, we should address it in the story synopsis section of the appropriate era. Discussion of whether or not those details carry over to other eras could either occur right there or in another section that addresses differences between eras.

Kal, Kara, Lar and Tinya will require more complicated pages. In Supergirl's case, its just a matter of, she's in continuity, she's out, she's back in again, with some specifics of what events are known to be back in continuity. Superboy will require the whole pocket universe/Superman/Time and Time Again/reintro to the legion explanation. Mon-El and Phantom Girl may need to have pages that don't fit the regular mold. Frankly, pretty much any explanation we come up with to explain how Lar and Tinya's histories hold together and relate dont hold water completely. Rather than trying to make it all work from an in-story POV, I think we should point out the pieces and inconsistencies from a real-world POV. Especially for new readers trying to figure out where everything fits, I think this will be the most helpful. There is also some disagreement among fans as to how the overlapping timelines should be interpretted, so it may be better to lay out the facts and let people draw their own conclusions.

On the SW6 folks -- I'm vacillating between thinking they should have their own separate page or be included in the main Legionnaire page. Many took names similar to their Reboot counterparts, such as Live Wire, Apparition and Andromeda, so it might be nice to have the additional pages to distinguish them from the Reboot versions. Then you have examples like Gossamer/Spark who would have the simplest, non-era referenceing page names. At present I'm leaning toward keeping them as a section on the main Preboot page, but I think we should have redirect pages such as Live Wire/Preboot pointing to the SW6 section of Lightning Lad/Preboot. Would it also be helpful to create a list of all the new character page names, grouped by character (Lightning Lad/Live Wire) to make sure that we are aware of all the one-offs we need to consider?

Elseworlds - I'm good with keeping them within the era to which they most apply, if that can be determined. Perhaps we can have a catch-alll section at the end that collects a list of all alternate versions. Don't know if that would be valuable or just repetition.

XS and Gates - I just broke those out while we await conversion to the Preboot/Reboot/Threeboot versions of pages. Pretty much all of the character pages will need renaming. I guess we would have a Post-Infinite Crisis/Lightning Saga section in their Reboot page? Should we consider having a Lighting Saga section in all of the Reboot/Preboot character pages to address the events of LO3W? Or a LO3W section I guess.

And now a new wrinkle - Post-Flashpoint. Levitz has made the transition so seemless that its difficult to tell whether these are new characters or not. These are definitely Preboot versions, but have they changed? Time will tell. I think we may learn more in the new Legion Lost series, especially if they remember one version of history but witness another.

Anyway, hope that clarifies my thoughts a bit. I think it might help me to create a new character page for one of the simpler characters that have essentially no changes from one era to another, barring successive story events. Given what we have discussed above, do you want to keep one or the other version of the template or merge the two into something new?

-- Gopher 14:26, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Responding to the "easy" stuff for now...

Post-FP isn't without Legion changes, but they're akin to post-Crisis:

• First and foremost, Superman has had an almost-hard reboot, with his parents dying before he became Superman and him never having been in a relationship, let alone married, Lois (apparently, revised versions of a few stories - most prominently Death of Superman - still exist, and he was still involved with the Legion in some capacity, but he's very low-powered in his early days as Superman, which will affect matters).
• Supergirl's been hard-rebooted. None of the stories involving the Jeph Loeb version of Kara (including threeboot Legion and that annual explaining the relationship between Retroboot B5 and her) still happened, and there was a suggestion that her powers have been tweaked to make them different from Superman's (although that's not particularly in evidence in the DCnU Supergirl #1)
• The Legion's costumes in their early days have been changed - in particular, Cosmic Boy's takes heavy cues from the Chris Sprouse SW6/Reboot costume - and other changes may become obvious in Legion: Secret Origin
• The history of this version has been compressed down to the same "five years" as the present-day DCnU history.
• You're NOT going to see any character referencing anything as having changed - in LSH v7, LL v2 or otherwise - since that's a flat edict. No DC character remembers the pre-FP universe, even the likes of Booster Gold or Barry Allen (except perhaps the "strange woman" that's cameoing in every book that set the whole thing up in Flashpoint #5)

Certainly, it falls under the same header as the GL and Bat-books though - some differences, but less major than Superman/Justice League/et al. I've even seen it speculated that LSH v6 is retroactively post-Flashpoint, ala the threeboot predating Infinite Crisis in publication, since Levitz made a bunch of retroactive changes from the Johns stories up to Lo3W (including retconning out the presence of a retroboot Emerald Empress' in Lo3W).

XS and Gates - yeah, they were the post-IC versions of the Reboot characters, so they stay on Reboot-based pages even if they now reside in a Preboot-based continuity. [There's a chance that could have changed post-FP so that they're now preboot-native versions, of course, but that remains to be seen.]

The other stuff, I'll get to later :) - Reboot (SoM) talk page 17:18, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Galleries

With the major infoboxes & templates changed over to new-style (some minor ones still pending), experimenting with new-style gallery designs. How does this, using some incidental covers, look? - Reboot (SoM) talk page 23:26, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

• 

  LSH v1 #1

• 

  LSH v2 #300

• 

  LSH v3 #1

• 

  LSH v4 #1

• 

  LSH v4 #0

• 

  LSH v5 #1

• 

  LSH v6 #1 (cover 1)

• 

  LSH v7 #1

I like the idea in general of having the gallery match in style with other elements, but having the curved edges around each item in the gallery seems like overkill. Is there any way to have the edging around the gallery as a whole? Alternately, perhaps a very light border color? The default gallery style draws very little attention to the borders around the individual items. Gopher 22:24, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I'll experiment a bit later (although the white border was causing me trouble), but just pointing out, the default MediaWiki 1.15 (our current version) gallery style is to have multiple nested borders - a grey one, a white one and another grey one - whereas the default in later MediaWiki versions simplified that to just a single border round each element.

As to the blackness of the borders... again, I'll experiment, but I'm trying to theme all "general" wiki elements as some combination of yellow/black/white. Any specific suggestions? - Reboot (SoM) talk page 11:57, 16 December 2011 (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)

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)

Renumbering & rebooting post-Flashpoint

Still busy, but...

DC's officially announced that every single DCU comic they publish in September will be a #1, and that there'll be yet another wholesale continuity revision to go with it. Besides the whole era thing that needs more info, that would require moving all the Adventure/Action/etc pages & covers to include v1s (and Rich Johnston suggests a Legion Lost v2 will be the LSH title of the reboot, rather than LSH v7).

I vote we (a) ignore the need for wholesale moving of pages to v1 until they inevitably denumber Action Comics back when they're getting near #1000 and (b) scream. - Reboot (SoM) talk page 00:29, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

The entire concept is unfortunate, and from what I can tell, no one except the editors at DC think it is a good idea. Let's wait until we see what they do, and who knows, maybe they will revert back the numbering fairly soon like they did with Adventure. I'm hoping that somehow after Flashpoint the DC universe reverts back to its old continuity as well . As for waiting on the eventual denumbering, agreed. Once the new numbering gets out of the single digits, the short term bump from new series numbering will be wearing off, so hopefully we wont have to wait until Action #1000. -- Gopher 02:00, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Still no word on an Adventure v2 (maybe we'll be spared), but Action v2 looks definite, as do LSH v7 and Legion Lost v2. Let's stick with the wait and see stance on Action, but Legion Lost v2 should not be too hard to accomodate, and v7 is no problem at all. --Gopher 10:36, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Had some time there, and got started on changing the Legion Lost stuff to Legion Lost v1 with AWB. Not everything (images haven't been touched), but the issue pages and most (not quite all) of the links are done. - Reboot (SoM) talk page 00:18, 14 June 2011 (UTC)