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Post by dans on Apr 4, 2022 16:35:08 GMT
I am mostly interested in links to 5EP stories; when I write about a character I'd like to know how that character was treated in other 5EP stories so I can stay in continuity. In some cases, though, for really obscure characters that may not have been used on 5EP I wouldn't mind a link to, say, the character's origin story. But agreed, links outside of 5EP from a Who's Who entry should be relatively infrequent.
It wasn't difficult to recreate something similar to the format I used in my Who's Who thread here on the Who's Who site. Before I transfer a lot of characters, can we work on a basic template? We can use mine as a starting place if we want, and identify changes, and maybe make a template that has [paste here] fields to make new characters simpler - paste the template into a page on the Who's Who site, and then paste information into the [paste here] fields?
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Post by DocQuantum on Apr 4, 2022 16:50:55 GMT
The basic template for characters and timelines and story synopses can be found on the Who's Who site. I'd encourage everyone to become familiar with what's been done already. The only template addition that I'd like us to add for now is a Who's Who-style section for vital stats, but with the recognition that not all characters will need this. The more obscure characters won't need more than just the Encyclopedia-style text entries, since we often won't know enough about them to fill out a bunch of vital statistics, etc. Check out all the current pages here: whoswho.5earths.com/?do=index
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Post by DocQuantum on Apr 4, 2022 17:03:55 GMT
So the basic character bio should basically be as follows:
The character's name, followed by a brief description in the top paragraph.
The proposed Who's Who-style vital statistics in a box, with a representative pic.
Subsequent paragraphs can cover history, which each one having a citation from a published comic or 5 Earths story (these can be turned into footnotes fairly easily, but I or someone else can always reformat them as footnotes later on).
After that, there could be sections for other things we know about the character that doesn't fit into the history section. While indexing the comics, I'm finding all sorts of interesting details about Green Lantern, for example, that wouldn't fit in the history but could fit into a Trivia section.
At the very bottom should be a list of all appearances. For characters like Superman or basically any regular headline character, these lists of appearances would go on separate pages since they'd be very long. For Superman, for example, it would probably have to be broken up into several pages.
There could be other sections needed for some characters. The DC Database uses categories, which I haven't set up yet, and I'm not sure how feasible it would be in Doku Wiki.
I don't like how the DC Database uses the real names of characters instead of their well-known character names. The naming thing gets complicated with many multiple characters using the same name. If it's only one character from Earth-1 and one from Earth-S with the same name, it's easy enough to just place (Earth-S) after their name. But on the same Earth we'd use other methods, such as their real name in parentheses, or other distinguishing factors. Using II and III in the names is also possible, but I find that more confusing if we overuse it.
I say we just stick to trying to write some good encyclopedic content for now, and focus on that. The rest of the questions can be worked out in good time.
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Post by DocQuantum on Apr 4, 2022 17:11:34 GMT
One thing I'd really like is a story summary of every single published 5 Earths story out there. I used to do these but found them too time-consuming with everything else I was doing, but if anyone likes doing that sort of thing, they'd be pretty helpful. Basically, for every individual scene in a story, you'd need one paragraph describing what's happening. It's kind of like crib notes for writers who don't necessarily have enough time to read every story but want to know what's gone on before. It would basically look like this: 5earths.proboards.com/thread/1093/legion-doom-underworld-unleashed-outlineAnd this is an example of one on the 5 Earths Wiki that has been completed, except for the Characters and Locations sections at the bottom. There's a brief rundown of the entire story at the top, which could be put on the Earth-1 Timeline, followed by a more detailed synopsis of each chapter. I prefer each scene to have its own paragraph, though, so I may reformat it to look more like the Underworld Unleashed outline I linked above. whoswho.5earths.com/Wonder_Woman_Paradise_Lost
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Post by DocQuantum on Apr 4, 2022 17:18:15 GMT
But let's not overthink it. I'd like everyone to participate, but all this discussion about formatting and stuff might be intimidating. It's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but everyone could add to the general knowledge base even if they don't want to go the extra step to put in vital statistics and all the rest. Dave's brief character summaries are sufficient for the majority of characters that exist in the DC Universe, I would think.
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Post by dans on Apr 4, 2022 21:20:00 GMT
So can I bring over the ones I created in their current format?
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Post by DocQuantum on Apr 4, 2022 21:44:31 GMT
Yes. We don't have to reinvent the wheel. A basic Who's Who style entry is fine.
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Post by dans on Apr 5, 2022 14:38:45 GMT
I have started transferring characters from the Who's Who Template thread to the Who's Who site.
They would look better if I had a standardized image size, I am going to try to do that.
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Post by DocQuantum on Apr 5, 2022 18:37:52 GMT
I see the Margo the Magician one. Could you replace the "\\" line breaks with just a standard double line break by hitting the Enter/Return key after each paragraph? It looks a bit strange. whoswho.5earths.com/Margo_the_MagicianLet's keep it simple, without a bunch of complicated coding.
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Post by dans on Apr 5, 2022 19:10:01 GMT
I put the image and some of the text in a table, so there is text next to the image, Apparently you can't put line breaks in the cell of a table. So I used a Word macro to reformat the text in that cell to work and used the same tool on the rest of the text. Yes, it would probably be OK to put a carriage return in place of all the \\ that are outside of the table. Some other options might be to take the image out of the table and have it live either above or below the text. I really like it to one side though. Maybe there is someone more familiar with dokuwiki code than I am who can figure out a way to place it side by side without a table.
I took the code out of all the text following the table at the top on all my entries.
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Post by dans on Apr 5, 2022 21:17:00 GMT
Where can we put the bios for characters that do not appear in any DC-spawned universe? Like red's Lady Satan and my Master Mystic characters?
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Post by DocQuantum on Apr 5, 2022 21:23:03 GMT
That can be kept on the forum. The Wiki is only for 5 Earths-related info. If a character from outside the DC Universe has appeared in a DC Comic, Fawcett, Charlton, etc, or 5 Earths story that has been published to the website, then there could be an entry in the Wiki. For example, Libby brought in some early Pre-Marvel characters and other public domain characters in his The Space-Time Gambit that could have short entries, but they wouldn't need more than a couple of paragraphs since they're just brief visitors. The first paragraph could be a brief description and where they first appear, and the second could describe what happened when they were brought to Earth-2 to fight the All-Stars.
Similar short entries could be made for the Tangent characters or the Impact! characters who each only appeared in one or two stories.
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Post by DocQuantum on Apr 5, 2022 21:41:31 GMT
John and Dave, I would think this would catch your interest, given your encyclopedic knowledge of characters. Let me know if you want an invite.
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Post by dave on Apr 6, 2022 0:43:17 GMT
Where can we put the bios for characters that do not appear in any DC-spawned universe? Like red's Lady Satan and my Master Mystic characters?
We could do a n Elseworlds Who's Who page
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Post by dans on Apr 6, 2022 1:05:37 GMT
We could, but I didn't want to just go making that big of a format change on someone else's server...
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