TWCL

Dutch · Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2011 8:33 am Post subject:

I'm moving towards doing similar things with almost 1100 strips - finding other ways to sort out the archive, etc, particularly now that I must be close to 100 separate story lines. A wiki is something I've always sort of toyed with, but to me, you really need a readership to do the work for you! Razz

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smbhax.com · Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2011 9:23 am Post subject:

Montanto wrote:

Having just gone over 1600 I worry about this constantly.

I try to deal with this by doing everything I can think of to make navigation easier. This includes everything from putting links in the comments section for every strip is especially continuity heavy, to setting up a wiki.

Now that I look for one, I'm kind of surprised not to find an obvious Archive page on your site.

I was going to say what about breaking it down into chapter or storyline headings somehow, even if some of them are slightly arbitrary?
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plughead · Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2011 1:41 pm Post subject:

I love the idea of a wiki. It seems like the next logical step in breaking things down and making our work as accessible as possible to new and potential readers.

I used to view cast pages, story summary pages and other reader aids to be a total waste of time. But particularly with a completed long-form comic, I'm realizing its just one more way for people to enjoy our work.

Also love the idea of crowdsourcing this stuff. I'm sure we all have enough fans who would LOVE to help out and get involved like this!
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Take care

Stef

http://sarahzero.com

smbhax.com · Posted: Sun Nov 06, 2011 12:31 am Post subject:

I have to say that as a casual reader, I almost never even think about looking at a site's wiki; they're just too dense, and the information is too scattered, as far as I've seen. What I would want in that situation would be a drop-down list--or at most one page--that could break things down for me at a glance.

If I really got hardcore into something then yeah, maybe I'd dig into a wiki about it. But not before that.
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plughead · Posted: Sun Nov 06, 2011 3:19 am Post subject:

For myself, I'd totally agree, smbhax

But it seems that today's webcomic readers kinda expect things like this. They want to have options, and I think I finally see the value in it for them. Wikis are tools that aid in consumption and allow for rapid learning about things they want to know about.

Besides, I know of tons of people who love go Wikipedia free-falling after reading an XKCD comic.
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Take care

Stef

http://sarahzero.com

Montanto · Joined: 10 Feb 2005 Posts: 155 Location: Seattle

Quote:

Now that I look for one, I'm kind of surprised not to find an obvious Archive page on your site.

I was going to say what about breaking it down into chapter or storyline headings somehow, even if some of them are slightly arbitrary?

I do actually have a half finished draft for an archive page on file. The problem is that while all of my storylines have names, they are also mostly broken up into little bits and shuffled. The end result would be giving a chapter heading to nearly every week. Personally I find this almost as intimidating as the webcomics, such as Questionable Content and Something Positive, who's archives consist of every strip being labeled by name, so I'm still experimenting with ways to streamline it.
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Montanto · Joined: 10 Feb 2005 Posts: 155 Location: Seattle

After all of that whining I just finished the Archive list I was talking about and added a beta version. See what you all think.
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Gual-kun · Joined: 23 Jun 2011 Posts: 249

If a story's good, the most, the better.

smbhax.com · Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2011 3:00 am Post subject:

Montanto wrote:

After all of that whining I just finished the Archive list I was talking about and added a beta version. See what you all think.

Not bad!

My initial reaction was that I'd like to see dates next to them so I can tell exactly where they fall; it isn't immediately obvious for instance (although it was after a few seconds) which end of the given "year" was the start.

And it's almost too much detail! Too much to take in at a glance, anyway. It might help to have at least an initial page where there's like a nice representative image for each year, and then (at most) maybe four or so links to within each year; that might be a little less overwhelming for the new reader, anyway.
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