Rich Morris' Comics - YAFGC and The ComixBlog

I think we need the Cast Page back so we can recall who is whom

It wouldn't help. It was hugely out of date and we haven't got time to keep up with a new one. You'll just have to settle for hunting through the archives or asking on the forum.

Adwen was introduced in the "Sword in the Rock" storyline starting at strip 851 "Think-King About it".
Specifically in strip 852 "Manly Yes...And They Like it Too!"

She's been in it on and off ever since, usually in the company of Sir Catianus who was also introduced in this storyline.

She's based on a PC in a "King Arthur Pendragon" campaign I used to run along with Catianus, Idries, Sidonie, Aiden, Runt, Bleddig and Arnora.

There's been enough requests that I may rethink... I have a bunch of site updates that need doing and I'll have some time now that the semester's winding down a bit. The main problem with the old cast page as far as upkeep went was the colour images - if we can go to black and white clips from strips, it'll be much easier to keep up to date.

What I definitely don't have time for is keeping up with adding strip references, or going back and adding in major strip references for long-running characters. There was a suggestion of a wiki, for a while, which would allow everyone to help keep it up to date, but I'd have to see how to set one up that allowed sign-ins to avoid spambots.

Maybe just note the story arcs the character appears in?

I would second the idea of a wiki, maybe with sign-ons by request to avoid spambots. It does appear that DreamHost will support either WikkaWiki or TWiki, if folks have any preferences.

It would allow for a variety of sources could be integrated into one place... we might even be able to integrate the Ohnorobot translations, google local search, etc...

The one I'm familiar with and have installed before is PmWiki, so I'll likely go with that if we end up doing anything. I was not envisioning revamping the entire site and the OhNoRobot code goes on the comic pages themselves, so I don't see how adding a cast wiki would change much of anything there.

I'm still not entirely convinced that it's a good/best option, but crowdsourcing is probably the only way to get a useful cast page setup considering the size of the cast in the strip and the demands of the day job at this point... and wikis are the easiest way to do that.

If it wouldn't be a complete time sink, I would suggest a simple black-and-white cast page with a quick-and-dirty description of the character, 50-100 words, absolute maximum. If you include a Wiki, the picture might link to it, where the community could fill in all of the details, like first appearances, important events, et cetera, et cetera.

So go with what you are familiar with, bless a few known/trusted individuals with accounts (the creation team), and let them build the skeleton of the wiki layout (though you will likely want to do the site skin yourself ). After you approve of the wiki skeleton that the creation team comes up with, then you can let the creation team grow from there as makes sense to the team. That way, you are still the final arbiter/appeal for big issues, but the day-to-day stuff gets handled by the wiki-team. Spam should not be an issue because all team members will be vetted (and/or can be "voted off the island").

As a side note, you may want to make a sub-forum in YAFGC Discussion for the Wiki itself so all questions from non-team folks can get shunted there.

Just food for thought....

This sounds like a lot of fun, but won't it be time consuming for you and BK? You will have to approve of every entry. If you do it though, i am in!

I have a suggestion... Here's what we need for the page - a panel that illustrates each character, and a brief description. Honestly, we don't need either DM or BK to do anything to set us up with that... All we need to do is determine the list of characters to go on the cast page. I suggest we divide it into two sections - The first section will be primary characters that we expect to see again. The second section will be everybody else that we want to put on the page. (But section one must be final before we move on to section two.)

So we need a selection committee - two or three folks who determine who gets "primary character" treatment, with input (but no binding suggestions) from the masses.

Then we need people to scour the comic for the "headshots" for each character.

Then we need people in charge of writing the bios.

The compiled character headshots and bios go to the selection committee for approval, and then are passed along to BK and DM. If they like, they go on the page. If not they Veto, and it goes back to the working group to revise the bio, or the selection committee works it up themselves.

(I'm thinking that bios would about the length of the above paragraph.)

This way, once the page is actually in place, all that DM and BK have to do is look over the work that's been done, and put what they like out there.

The cool thing about crowd-sourcing software is that you can normally delegate most functions, yet reclaim them if things get out of hand.
In the case of a Wiki, things can always be reverted back to an earlier point, so DM (or any persons she delegates to) does not have to approve all changes unless she wants that kind of control. I would expect that in this case she would instead be handing that off to the "creation team" I mentioned in an earlier post, so that most of her effort is in the installation of the wiki software and in the tailoring of the wiki "skin". Everything else is the team's effort, with DM/BK retaining veto power.

OK! Term's almost over (one paper left, + grading...) and I have a little bit more breathing room, so I've installed a cast page wiki. The css is pretty basic right now - I'll edit it in bits and pieces as we go, but that's for colours and such. The basic layout's as I like it.

what I'll do is ask folks who are interested in committing time to the project to PM me or post in this thread by tomorrow afternoon (accounting for time zones and access here). I'll PM those folks with the url, and leave registration open for a few days. Once those folks have registered, I'll close registration and those who have accounts can start poking around inside.

I ended up using WikkaWiki because of the already-integrated registration plugin, so I'm learning the new wiki!syntax along with everyone else. Of course it couldn't be the same as PMwiki...

WikkaWiki syntax instructions here:

http://docs.wikkawiki.org/FormattingRules

I am, of course, in.

I'm in too.

I've also started a topic on trying to get ourselves organized a bit before we all just start making pages willie-nilly over here.

Please stop by if you are planning to contribute.

- Bun

I am in, in, in!