Template talk:Infobox comics story arc

Suggestions

I have been working through quite a few of the X-Men story arcs (the latest of which is X-Men: Manifest Destiny) and adding this infobox, as well as updating some articles which were erroneously using the comic title one and a couple of things occurred to me (as well as how nicely the boxed worked by the way and how easy it is to switch to it from the comic book):

• It probably needs a genre field like the comic book title.
• It might be useful to have a next and previous field, as a lot of the arcs lead into each other.

Anyway just a few thoughts after playing with this quite a bit recently. (Emperor (talk) 20:02, 25 September 2008 (UTC))

Short comments...

'Porting the genre material from the titles 'box was on my list somewhere. It's been pushed back with dealing with the FairuseBot issue.

I'm not sure that a sequencing box is a good idea. It may work in some instances, but it will cause problems as well:

• Story arcs and crossover events: an event generally will run across multiple titles, some of which will have story arcs that star before and/or end after the issues that are part of the event. How are those to be sequenced?
• "Family" titles: Things like the "Bat-books", "Spider-books", etc have points in there publication history where they are loosely connected. There are "common points", but for the most part the story arcs, if they exist, run independently. Again, how the linkages to be viewed? By series only? By "family"?
• Notability: Yes, there are event or arc sequences that are highly notable. But there are just as many "fillers". If this is put in place do we start adding articles for the "less notable" arcs?
• Single issue stories: Right now the consensus is that not every story gets an article. Some of the arcs and events sit before, after, or between single issue stories. How do we handle those red links?

- J Greb (talk) 22:37, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Would it be possible to have an "editor" field to match the comic book title infobox. I added one at Superman: New Krypton, if you want to see if it works. (Emperor (talk) 02:35, 7 January 2009 (UTC))

The field should be up and working. - J Greb (talk) 02:58, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Problem

Seems like the ISBN is showing below the titles. A bit difficult to describe so see: Demon in a Bottle. (Emperor (talk) 23:56, 27 October 2008 (UTC))

Fixed, I'd tweaked the 'box for collections like Batman: Anarky where it isn't reall an arc. Missed aminor point though. - J Greb (talk) 00:02, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Cheers. (Emperor (talk) 00:45, 28 October 2008 (UTC))

Just a note to say that, while letterers is in the example they don't show in the infobox (see e,g, Batman: The Last Arkham]). Also would it be possible to add an editors field at the same time to keep it consistent with the titles box? Cheers. (Emperor (talk) 18:42, 5 December 2008 (UTC))

Should be working now... - J Greb (talk) 23:10, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Removal/revision of genre tags

The genre tags currently employed as a part of this infobox are woefully inadequate to properly represent the myraid of literary genres that exist. Moreso, the tags are badly coded as using multigenre often leading to a comma at the beginning of the list and does not follow the Manual of Style (Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(capital_letters)#Musical_and_literary_genres) in regards to captitalization. Therefore, the tags should be removed outright (leaving only the "|genre =" tag) or at the very least be recoded to fix the capitalization and comma errors.

Post replies at Template_talk:Infobox_comic_book_title#Removal.2Frevision_of_genre_tags --Marcus Brute (talk) 00:02, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Generating WP:DASH errors

Small formatting issue This infobox creates WP:DASH typographical errors (such as on The Lightning Saga) when it generates text such as "April – June 2007" (correctly including the non-breaking space.) The problem with this is that "April" and "June" should be written with only an ndash between them and no space at all. If the date ranges are within the same year, this infobox should generate text such as "April–June 2007" and only create spaced dashes for text such as "April 2009 – June 2010". —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:43, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

FWIW - it's changeable but when there's time. - J Greb (talk) 03:26, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Preceded by/Followed by

User:J Greb recently reverted my addition of preceded_by and followed_by parameters to the template. I find them useful for navigational purposes, much like books have preceded by and followed by, or television episodes, etc. Not every arc has a specific followup arc, but it's an optional parameter that is useful for navigation. I think it should be added back. And again, it is an optional parameter. --Odie5533 (talk) 16:22, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

could you provide an example of where it would be used? Frietjes (talk) 16:26, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't read many comic books, but there are series where it will say "part 1 of 3 of story arc", then after the arc is done, it will be "part 1 of 3 of new story arc". An example would be Catwoman number 74, which is the final part of the "Crime Pays" arc. Number 75 begins the "Waking up on the Wrong Side of the Universe Part 1". If we had articles for each arc, it would be useful to navigate between the arcs. --Odie5533 (talk) 16:50, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

so these are all theoretical examples, with no current potential uses? Frietjes (talk) 17:33, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

How about The Sandman: Preludes & Nocturnes → The Sandman: The Doll's House → The Sandman: Dream Country → The Sandman: Season of Mists, etc.? GoingBatty (talk) 00:18, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Long and short: the "Before/after" with comics is going to create at least two problems that out weigh the marginal, at best, benefits the create:

1. Defining the sequencing. Is it based on publication date? Theme? Character? Some of those are arbitrary, open to dispute, and also open to OR.
2. Fostering red links for articles that cannot meet GNG.

- J Greb (talk) 23:55, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Agreed that the sequencing may not always be as straightforward as the publication date order of albums and singles. GoingBatty (talk) 00:18, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

The problem is that publication dates are the only objective ones we've got. And even that can cause problems with crossover arcs - are we tracking each character? Even if they are part of a team? Or not there for an entire story? Again, more troble for very little benefit. - J Greb (talk) 00:57, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Question then for Odie5533 - would navboxes be sufficient for navigational purposes? GoingBatty (talk) 01:18, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

In some cases they might be, but for some arcs it would be overkill to create a template when you only want to link say two arcs together (e.g. I'd like to link Throne of Atlantis to The Secret of the Cheetah; creating a template for this simple link would be overkill). Again, it's an optional parameter. Crossover arcs could be followed by a bullet list of branching arcs. Or they could be followed by nothing. It would be up to editors of individual articles to decide how and if to use the optional navigational parameter. Creating an optional parameter is not a content policy and says nothing of the proper use of itself, only that it can be used as a useful navigational tool in some situations. It doesn't have to foster the creation of red links; followed by listings can just as easily be unlinked. --Odie5533 (talk) 02:40, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Something you may have missed: {{Justice League}} has a storylines section that is in publication order. Adding "The Secret of the Cheetah" there creates the navigation link, as well as a link to other relavent articles. Adding it to this template is unneeded. Further "Throne of Atlantis" is also an Aquaman storyline, so there are 2 different succession threads. - J Greb (talk) 18:19, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Change article categories so they only appear in articles

Could someone please change the template code so that the article categories only appear in articles, and not in user pages such as User:ChannelSpider/sandbox/2? The maintenance categories should still appear in user/draft pages to encourage editors to fix mistakes before moving to articlespace. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 18:01, 25 June 2021 (UTC)