Well what I would like to curb is people updating a profile for a character each week a new comic comes out. I just think back to how much of a pain in the butt Spider-Verse was because people were updating pages without waiting for the story to reconcile itself. They were creating pages without doing the proper research. And for what? A lot of frustration for an even that only lasted a few months.

I was speaking primarily of the character history. Stats, sure those should be current. So should the image of the character. But I think we need to put a stop to the week-to-week edits of a characters profile while an arc is still active.

While we can mention that Falcon becomes the new Captain America, we shouldn't be transcribing the events that led to this change in title until the arc is finished so it is a complete recounting. What was it? Four to six months?

Perhaps three month wait period before this info can be added is a tad long, but I would certainly argue that we curb weekly edits of a character in favor of waiting for an arc to be complete.

Is there competition? I don't think there is much out there. You go to Comicvine and they're allowing people to do weekly updates and it looks like !@#$, and they're not as detail orientated, or focused on one area of expertise.

The official Marvel Wiki hasn't seen regular updates happen in a very long time, we've left them in the dust years ago.

The Appendix? They're masters of the obscure, also they wait a loooong time before updating characters, if said characters are in their purview.

Wikipedia? Again, same reasoning as Comicvine. But on top of that, when certain pages are under the radar, they're also very strict about adding incomplete information. The only reason why a comparable page on Wikipedia isn't peer reviewed is because of lack of resources to focus on things that (from the perspective of Wikipedia as a whole) are trivial to other more important information.

Or are we talking about the handful of fan pages that are focused on a specific character or team? Most of those are going the way of the Dodo, and a lot of them don't keep quite as updated as you'd think.

These are all things that I would agree would need to be updated right away in the stats section. But, until an arc is complete I don't think people should be updating the character's page until its all done.

Using your example: The Secret Origin of Tony Stark. Go back and try to look at that story as though it was brand new. Now, imagine, you read the first issue then add that information to the page. Just the first issue of that arc.

Now wait a week. Then add information from the following issue. And so on.

That story arc was not linear and so some facts were not presented until key moments of the story.

Because of the non-linear nature of the story, someone could have been adding bits and pieces here and there, and things are going to fall on the wayside.

Case in point, compare the main and expanded history sections of the character. The section regarding it in the expanded history page was done when the arc was over and is complete, concise, and accurate, has an adequate number of references. It tells a complete story. Versus the main page, which is inadequate and has all sorts of things jammed in there. Look at the edit history on that. Updates where almost daily, and there was a lot of revisions, roll backs, constant adding and removing of spoilers, and dickering back and forth while the arc was still in progress.

The amount of energy we're wasting correcting things is astounding. Waiting until an arc is over makes more sense because it allows us hesitation to at least wait until the current story is finished.

I don't think that this is really a valid argument so much anymore. The excessively long reveal to the identity of the Red Hulk was a one time thing. Female Thor's identity was revealed in a much shorter period of time comparably. Marvel's pulling this trick out of their hat once every what? Three to five years?

I would agree to creating pages for these characters. But sticking to adding things to an arc. Using the Red Hulk as an example, there were four or five different story arcs involving him until his identity was revealed.

It's not about being "too careful" in my mind. It's being accurate. Doing the job once and doing it right. Which, with very few exceptions, most people who are updating a character page week after week are usually the worst at it. It's impulsive, and not well researched or written properly. It negates our spoilers policy, and as admins we spend valuable time fixing these mistakes constantly. Or worse, we get someone who blows it all out of proportion and there is an edit war, which again wastes our time and energy.

As for falling behind. We are behind in a lot of places, and they continue to be left behind. There are tons of gaps in our information.

I would argue that people don't come here for more information on the stuff they can still get on the racks. They come here to get information about older stories. There are literally thousands of places they can go and read summaries about what's currently going on in "hype-y" kind of way.

I was pretty much overseeing our coverage on the events from Spider-Verse and I have to say they were not as catastrophic as you put it out.

The only truly problematic issue that arose with Spider-Verse was the whole deal between Earth-67 and Earth-6799. Another minor issue was some new users (not rookies, Day 1 new users) listing the main characters from Earth-8107 dead, confusing them with their Earth-1983 counterparts. And that was it. The rest was pretty smooth.

I admit the coverage on The Secret Origin of Tony Stark was a bit crude, however, I did update the pages of the respective characters as soon as any relevant information came to light (Tony Stark being adpoted, to be specific). And then I re-read the entire story arc to get any details missing. That story also happened in early 2013, so my not-as-learned-in-English-as-today past self is to blame for any inadequacy. I'm a lot less blunt when it comes to narrating events now. I also have to say that there wasn't "a lot of revisions, roll backs, constant adding and removing of spoilers, and dickering back and forth" because I was the only user covering the story arc on the entire site. Most of the revisions and rollbacks at the time were a consequence of trolls or inexperienced users on things unrelated to The Secret Origin of Tony Stark, like this, this, this, this, this, or this.

Nausiated, I think we're on the same page as far as big changes being immediate (Falcon becoming Captain America), and I'd agree the specifics could wait until the arc is over (though I'd say a "and Falcon became Captain America" or something like that could be put as a placeholder. You may or may not agree, and I won't argue either way. It's a small detail to me, no big deal).

As far as the quality of our competition, it doesn't really matter. They're still our competition. I would never say we should compromise to beat them, but we should compromise to stay competitive. I see us used as random links in a lot of places (makes me feel proud every time. Because even if I didn't work on that specific page, I know I had a small hand in it being around), but I also see other places (mostly Wikipedia. Oddly enough, Comicvine gets referenced a LOT, but I don't see a ton of links to their wiki pages). I absolutely believe quality should come first, but we should always look at a way we can be a TIMELY product of quality. To the best we feel we can be. Which is oddly noncommittal, but I said it anyway.

And sorry, but I think you misread my sentence on the secret origin of Iron Man. I was actually using that to support your idea of holding off until the end of arcs. Mostly for the very reasons you said. You have a good point, don't think I'm saying you don't. Whether I entirely agree with it or not...you've got a good point. It's one I've either argued or been tempted to argue many times.

And as far as "too careful" vs "accurate", the two are not mutually exclusive. If I record the information from a comic the second it comes out in an accurate way, then that's accurate information. If the second issue completely contradicts that (anyone remember that Spider-Woman origin series from after she/Veranke came back in New Avengers), then that is now the most accurate information. I'm all for waiting until the arc is resolved (being careful) and not presenting the latest information (being less accurate. And the longer we wait, the less accurate the information is, especially if it's an origin series), but there might be times I'd disagree with that (such as Falcon becoming Captain America. See how I brought that around again?).

But, all told, I'm not saying what you have is a bad idea. I'd say I agree with...95%. I just want to make sure we're keeping the bigger picture in mind. That's all. And whatever the final decision is...awesome. At least we had the discussion.

Okay thinking of sending this out to users next week. Any thoughts/revisions/omissions? Please let me know by Wednesday.

Everything seems alright.

Yep

Okay, I'm thinking we should lift edits on Last Days plot lines, because they all happen prior to Secret Wars. I think that will be a nice treat for people who are waiting.

Seems fair to me. With another warning that the reach of edits stop immediately as soon as the characters are vaporized in nothingness with no (useless/irrelevant) speculation.

I agree with that.

You example for the "3" is the example of things that won't be needed, right ?

Also, Secret Wars Love delivered a few designations for seemingly minor Domains (0.616, the reality where Marvel insects lives in NYC, along with regular heroes, among others). Just saying. Not any point to make here.