Comixpedia Wiki for Webcomics

Eric Burns had a post about the limits of using the wikipedia.org for webcomics. I think this is a good idea and one that I can get rolling on Comixpedia early next week. I still think wikipedia is a great thing and it’s nice to get webcomics-related entries in there. Still a webcomics-specific wiki would not have to have any restrictions on “importance” or “popularity” that the wikipedia does. So I think this new effort can co-exist well with the wikipedia.

If you’re interested in this project let me know – I’m going to set up some kind of list (probably email) so that anyone who wants to help can jump in to it.

Also this thing is going to need a name and a logo! Submit either or below in a comment.

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Xaviar Xerexes

Wandering webcomic ronin. Created Comixpedia (2002-2005) and ComixTalk (2006-2012; 2016-?). Made a lot of unfinished comics and novels.

25 Comments

  1. Call me dull, but I think “The Webcomics Encyclopedia” is probably our best bet.

  2. Pppht! Unlike you losers, I’M EXCITING! Check these bits of title brilliance out:

    “We Got A Mary-Sues, And We Aint Afraid To Use ‘Em!”

    or

    “We Want To Be Linked From Penny Arcade, But Not In A Bad Way.”

    maybe

    “Snazzy T-Shirts!”

    my favorite though…

    “Eric Burns Will Eventually Say Nice Things About All Of These Comics”

  3. How are we going to subdivide it? And how do we dictate who is allowed in and who isn’t?

    For that matter, what would be considered a web comic? Would an illustrated serial story (ie, a text-based story with pictures, posted section by section) be considered a web comic and thus be included? And how long should a comic be around before it’s included? Should it be based on number of updates? Frequency? Popularity? Or what?

    For instance, EvaComics only has like a dozen updates and went on a year-long hiatus, just recently reappearing. Would that dictate it not being allowed in? Or would a comic on hiatus be put in a special “Dead Comics File” with such notaries as Avalon, Bobbins, and It’s Walky?

    Also, who decides what can be allowed in?

    Robert A. Howard, Tangents Webcomic Reviews
    http://www.tangents.us

  4. Count me in. I’ve been way excited about this since Eric brought it up yesterday, and I’d be glad to help run it.

    Would we be using the GNU public license? It would make it extremely easy to pass entries back and forth with Wikipedia if we did.

  5. Why not everything? If this is going to be comprehensive, we can’t exclude anyone. If someone cares enough about some obscure comic that updated five times and disappeared to write an entry about it, and the entry is well-written and fits the tone we want, I see no reason for it not to stay. There should probably be some minimum threshhold for putting a comic in (say, 25 comics in the archive) so that we don’t have entries for comics that are literally just starting, but other than that, anything goes.

  6. Unless your main goal is to educate non-webcomic savvy people, and then you should call it “Webcomixpedia”, because that’s what it is, and they won’t have heard of Comixpedia anyways.

  7. I actually registered just to post this comment, but if there’s really going to be an actual webcomics wiki, you might as well count me in. I’m not sure what I’d contribute outside of maybe corrections or an odd article or two here and there, but I’m definitely interested in this project.

  8. I’ll toss my suggested name/logo into the hat:

    Obviously a more humorous tone than most suggestions, but then hey, that’s me. Meant as a parody on what seems to be most people’s first reaction to discovering webcomics. Which hopefully will be one of the potential outcomes of such a wiki.

  9. When did “no exclusion” become selective? This has been covered a few times in the Websnark thread that started this already. If someone cares enough to write a decent, properly encyclopedia-toned entry, let them write it about any comic they damn well want. 1 comic, 5 comics, whatever. Why not let people apply for the proverbial forgiveness rather than permission? For cases where someone writes an entry for a comic that updated a few times but have no intentions of continuing, have a system that allows people to submit comics they believe they should be deleted from the encyclopedia, but only for the reason that they stopped before they started, and not because of lack of archive depth, or lack of popularity, etc. Let everyone who wants to participate do so.

  10. Same here. I don’t know how active I could be, but I’d like to help out as best I can.

  11. This is… um… a timely idea, XX. Very, very timely.

    We may have something to discuss at the next WW meeting. You’ll be there, right?

  12. “Comixpedia.” From the view of the outsider, Comixpedia is a better name for a webcomics wikipedia than it is for the newsmagazine we’ve got now. There would have to be some re-branding of the existing newsmagazine, but in the long run it might be worth it. I’m not certain about this (it depends upon XX’s commitment level, for one thing) but it’s a thought.

  13. For my money? If it’s sequential art on the web, let it in.

    Seriously. There’s no reason to keep anyone out. The storage and bandwidth requirements should be trivial.

  14. That’s been the suggestion made. I think it makes the most sense for everyone, since it would mean neither we, nor Wikipedia, nor anyone else who wants to work with similar material would need to reinvent the wheel.

  15. Dull can be good. Comixpedia itself wouldn’t be bad but it will always refer to the whole ball of wax here.

    Clever names are good too –

  16. I’m with Eric – this should be generally all-inclusive. From the biggest to the smallest. The nice thing about a wiki is that the barrier to you writing something to it is clicking on the edit page basically.

    There are plenty of other directories/sites/etc that filter a bit (or a lot). This one can be wide open.

  17. It’ll be GNU so that we can borrow from the wikipedia freely and they can do so as well. Hopefully at the end of the day the whole world of webcomics will be entered into this project and whatever meets wikipedia’s cut-off will be duplicated there.

  18. T winds up being the big winner… only two years afterwards.  The wiki does seem to be going by Comixpedia — or comixpedia.org I guess.

  19. Some thoughts on names:
    ——————————
    Lexicomicon
    Lexicomica
    The Webcomic Comprehensive
    The Webcomic Compendium
    Webcomipedium
    Tome of Webcomicry
    Webcomic What?
    Webcomic Way
    Webcomic Collective
    All Webcomics
    Webcomic Common(s)
    Webcomic Companion
    Webcomic Complete
    The Complete Webcomics
    Character Section Under Construction
    Webcomic Concordance
    Webcomicordance
    The Cyclopedic Webcomica
    Webcomic Codex
    The Archive
    Archive section down
    Infinite Canvas Collection
    Beyond the Bitmap
    Em Dash Encyclopedia
    Line Art Lexicon
    Offset Online
    Maximum Resolution
    Only Online
    Only on the internet
    Non-syndicate
    Comixegesis
    Comixplication
    The Freak, The Geek, and the Comic Relief
    Bob
    Computer Comics
    Just the Web
    Cute, furry, violent thing
    Not just for newspapers anymore
    First-Previous-Next-Latest(Last)
    WebbyComWiki
    All Are Notable
    Webcomic Consensus
    Not on Paper
    Copy amd Paste

    Now I must sleep.

  20. “Eric Burns Will Eventually Say Nice Things About All Of These Comics”

    Even given my active interest in all of this, I wasn’t moved to register… until I saw this.

    That is hilariously awesome to an extent I cannot communicate.
    And, bizarrely enough, that very quality is what makes me love his criticism so damn much.

  21. I like The Webcomic Compendium. The name should have “webcomic” and/or “webcomics” in the title, so that it will come up when people Google “webcomics.” Our main goal here should be to become THE comprehensive directory for webcomics and everything that goes with them, and that means we need a good Google presence.

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