Notes on Concepts Pages

This just occurred to me as something which should be pointed out. There is no real direction in the FAQ or other sources about how to use concepts. This is going to be a work in progress as I work through them, but it is important to know the notes and direction for certain pages (which are usually on the pages themselves, but not listed when tagging them). Anyway here are some guidelines:

Academy Awards:

These should be tagged from comic book based movies. So please don't tag the Lord of the Rings.

Homage Covers:

Whenever one of these is tagged in an issue make sure to write on the issue page what it is an homage to.

Universe Pages:

For entire universes such as Star Trek or Star Wars, there should be only one concept page for the entire universe. There is no need for a Jedi concept page and a Force concept page as these are intrinsic to the universes. If there is a need to tag some like Jedis, it can go as a team.

Genres:

Genres can always be tagged, as long as they are not too obvious. So stuff like Romance, Western, Post-Apocalytic and War are ok.

Object or team like concepts:

For instance Aliens and Robots do not need to be tagged every time and these fit more under the Object guidelines for tagging characters. Tag notable instances of their depiction, not every depiction.

Letter Columns:

This should not be tagged ever.

Reader Submitted Fashion and Interactive Reader Decisions:

Tag these every time they show up.

DC Explosion and Implosion:

The tagged issues are as should be maintained. There is no need to add additional issues.

good write up, will this eventually be shifted into the troubleshooting guide? seems kinda small (yet important) to get its own pinned thread.

@pikahyper: I am not sure, probably needs a new home, I don't want it getting lost some place. Or maybe not pin it but link it in the troubleshooter?

@pikahyper: Also we should expand this (this is just my input thus far) I cant remember what the policy is on TPBs for instance.

So does this mean that Star Wars gets its own page and the other concepts get incorporated into it?

@razzatazz: Do we have a distiguishing between what constitutes Team and Concept. I brought this up before that IMO a team is a group that works together, while a concept is individuals that have a commonality to them but are not necessarily a team. Since characters can now be added to concepts it seems logical we can now make these seperate.

@wmwadeii: I suppose so, I am trying (with the help of the other mods) to sort out the concepts in a more coherent manner. I am not sure that people have a firm grasp of what the concepts should be on this site. I am going to get a better definition soon, and this thread is the start of that.

There are a lot of concepts that can probably be merged now that we can add aliases to them.

Like zombies..................

@x35: That is another perfect example, I'd personally say get rid of the team and add the data to the concept along with all the characters.

Mods strongly disagree ¬_¬

I don't disagree now that characters can be added to concepts, races should stay as teams though.

@pikahyper: Why are there two lists for enemies? On the Thor page, I can click on this bar that says "enemies." But there is also an entirely separate page which is the exact same thing.

@xxxddd: the bar list on the main page is limited to the first ten enemies/friends you click to the page for the expanded list, it was like this on the old site too ,not sure why you asked in this thread.

@x35: @pikahyper: The reason I say use the concept instead of the page is the same reason I converted (even before the new site) a few Transformers related pages to concepts instead of teams. They really aren't a "Team" as much as a concept or subset/idea/process (I'm looking for a word and cant' find it atm).

@wmwadeii: I think in this case it would be better to create a Transformers universe page. You could get into a lot of detail there.

@razzatazz: Maybe I should have put some examples, Targetmaster, Powermaster, Triple Changers, Combiner, Binary Bonding, Pretender. These while yes could be put into a Transformers Concept page, would weight down the page, when a concept of the specifics would work better. So based on the comment X35 and Pika made I was explaining why Marvel Zombies would work better as a concept than a team. This also goes along with the Star Wars conversation in the other thread where Jedi would work as a Team since they all work together and the concept data can be summarized on the Star Wars page and full detail on the team page. Hope that makes more sense.

@wmwadeii: I know what you meant, I was combing through the wiki yesterday trying to make sense of the concept pages. The problem with those concepts as I see it, is that no one will ever be exposed to them. If there was a big umbrella Transformers page with that information in it and then got rid of the other concepts it could work a lot better. I would like to see that. As I see it the problem with concept pages is that we do not use them to their full potential and instead of being informative they become confusing. A Transformers page with Franchise History, Comic History, Universe Mechanics and Other Media.

So could look like:

Franchise History

They gained fame from being a toy line from Hasbro then ...

Comic History

Their first appearances were with Marvel then changed to ...

Universe Mechanics

They are robots that can transform. The different types of transformations are ...

Other Media

They were a popular television show and three blockbuster movies ...

@razzatazz: With this idea, it would seem as though we would want just basic statement/paragraph about the other concepts that exist. For example Powermaster has several paragraphs of information on it, including characters involved, origin, basic overview of what they are. If we added all that to a single page, IMO some will get very bloated. I listed only a few examples but haven't even scratched the surface of other concepts that pertain to their universe.

In order to have them on the same page we would have to keep each one to I'd say 1 paragraph each. Sometimes this would be easy but other times harder. And if they have members specific to that concept we would want to list them. This then comes back to if there are individuals that are involved who are on opposite sides (good guys, bad guys, etc) should it be a team, even if they don't work together or fight each other, they share a common "concept".

@wmwadeii: I can appreciate that, however, I have generally no idea how Transformers have evolved over the years and if it were all collected in one place it might be advantageous to do so. Do you understand what I mean about the umbrella idea? It is not really a concept anyway for something which is endemic to the universe, just in a different way. They are still robots which transform right?

@razzatazz: I was actually looking into creating a Transformers concept page similar to how Pika created that Star Trek one and The Walking Dead, just have been working on other elements. This would be the umbrella idea you were talking about. My question would be do we add a small paragraph and then have it link off to the secondary concepts, or just leave it at a single paragraph?

The concepts I listed are two things, some are a group of transformers that share a common makeup. For example Pretenders were a new group of transformers created to have a exo-shell that looked like Earth creatures, or combiners are a subset of transformers that combine to form a larger robot. The second could be considered a process or enhancement to them Binary Bonding was a process created on another planet to help the Transformers to include Powermasters, Targetmasters, and Headmasters. These involve the Transformers but they are not necessarily the robots themselves. Again maybe this is where they need to be formed into teams instead of concepts. Then they can be linked from the Umbrella page to the team page.

@wmwadeii: The Star Trek one is what I am basing my idea off of, but it is not extensive enough. It should include basically everything which can inform a reader about that stream of comics. I think it would depend about the concepts though. Like I am not sure for instance that we need a concept page for the Force from Star Wars when that is endemic to the universe and one of the basic mechanics of what makes it different and special. The same I guess would be the case for the different classes of Transformers, but those could easily fit under the teams sections (keep in mind teams don't need to be named teams or even necessarily identified teams).

@razzatazz: The Academy Awards link seems to be broken. :]

@razzatazz: I guess to further the confusion is when we have things like the Speed Force, and Project Rebirth and 2.0 and team. I mean they could all be rolled into a character page or DC/Marvel Universe page.

@xanni15: Is that better? I relinked it.

@wmwadeii: Personally for me where it gets really complicated is that we run a comic wiki, and granted franchises like G.I. Joe, Transformers, Star Wars, Star Trek and even He-Man or Indiana Jones have large presences in comics, they are also spread out over a wide range of media.

@razzatazz: Might sound like a dumb question, but as we know the only dumb one is the one not asked, but with the redesign did they add the ability to change the page type, for example from concept to team, or from character to team? I'd assume not as the coding would probably be a nightmare, but figured I'd ask.

I was thinking, the idea of having the entire universe in one concept would definitely help anyone looking into getting into a franchise.

@razzatazz: Yep. I didn't know if it was a big deal or not but I figured you might want to know. :]

@wmwadeii: We cannot do that, I don't know about the code, but it does seem like a challenge.

@guttridgeb: That is what I was thinking and we have some very knowledgeable people that could put such a page together.

@wmwadeii: changing page types was looked into but deemed too dangerous for use as it runs the risk of corrupting the database because of the intrinsic differences of the various pages.

@razzatazz: kinda off topic but I just had a thought reading through this thread, the recommended reading guides could be extremely helpful for expanding some of these concept pages and making them even more important to the site, for example the Force concept page or Transformers page could host complete reading timelines, things that go beyond the capabilities of story arc pages, the Force page could include the movies so users would know when they fit into the reading timelines, for Transformers users can differentiate between Marvel/IDW/G1/G2. Some could even go so far as to be used as franchise pages, I could see how it could be very useful to say associate a Transformers franchise page to every Transformers character, movie, story arc, object, location, etc., it would be even better if we could link them to volumes instead of issues though.

I dunno if any of that made sense I just woke up, I may have had a lucid moment.

@pikahyper: I got the idea this morning of different formats for different kinds of concept pages, and I think that fits together. I think universe concept pages would work better as a complete introduction to the universes, so that someone can read it and become an instant expert. That ties in with what you are saying as well. I think this could be a first step to cleaning up a lot of story arc and concepts.

@razzatazz: it can also take some unnecessary content off of character and team pages, for example Other Media doesn't need to be as inclusive or detailed, even novels would make more sense on a concept/franchise page then on character pages, going back to the Force concept novels could be moved into the Recommended Reading so they can be shown in the timeline and then books wouldn't need to be on any other pages. With a Batman franchise page much more info could go into the various cartoons/tv shows and then those don't need to be on the Batman page any more freeing up room for more Batman specific info.

@pikahyper: True, I was aiming more to get the other media concepts filtered out though and put into a much more coherent format. As they stand now. I get what you are saying about the Batman stuff though, but as a comic character that stuff is hard to separate out more so than for instance G.I. Joe.

@razzatazz: well I don't mean move it in its entirety from one to the other, movies should be massively shrunk down since they have pages on the site already and images really aren't necessary for them, for tv shows and cartoons on the character page they would be a short paragraph for each one dealing with the characters role in it and then on the concept/franchise page would be the real detailed info, episodes guides pretty much but not plagiarized, remember when most of the young justice cartoon characters had massive episode guides on the character pages? that is the kind of stuff that would be offloaded onto the concept/franchise pages, having that info has merit but not in the places it is put, easier to organize and it isn't redundant being on multiple character pages.

@pikahyper: Yes agreed, but baby steps right?

@razzatazz: gotta strike while the iron is hot and editors are paying attention to what we say ;P

@pikahyper: Sure, I just think we should work on cleaning up the clutter, the more we chip away at it, the bigger projects we can complete.

@razzatazz: true true

One more to add:

Digital Comic:

Add if a comic was released exclusively or first digitally. It shouldn't be used on all titles released digitally though, as that would be almost everything released in the last few years and in the future.

There would be exceptions like a digital re-release that is different than the first publishing. For example the original was under a different publisher. Or it was 8 issues and for digital they released it again as 4 or 16. I'd say times like this it would be OK to use the concept.

@digifiend: @wmwadeii: for the time being just stick to the current procedure for digital comics, I'm in the planning stages of revamping everything digital related.

Because somebody created Pirates as a team page yet Ninjas are a concept, and Aliens and Robots are concepts yet Zombies and Monsters are teams I thought I'd bump the thread. Maybe a more defined for rule needs to be created as well, and with this then the 3 teams here should probably fall under the concept header instead of a team (ie: a group of people who work together for a common goal, and can be extended to races and alien species)

@razzatazz did you have a chance to read my prior post? Didn't want to start splitting before a decision was made.

@wmwadeii: Well I created the robots page, but I can understand how it would go wrong. I would say that pirates should be a team page and aliens not. The aliens and robots pages are more designed to highlight what those things are as opposed to listing them every time they show up in comics.

@razzatazz: Yeah, but I see all of the ones I listed like you mentioned as a highlight of what they are. The appearance thing would be the debate for me. And since Pirates are = to Ninjas then that would make the assumption that if you say Pirates should be a team that Ninjas should be converted as well. I know the Zombies and Monsters have been debated before of where they fit. Wow this Team vs. Concept thing can make your head hurt.

@wmwadeii: Ninjas should be a team