Editor wiki

Last version before going to non-lasso site

Dealing with the Error List

Genre List Excel list of all words or phrases used as genres

Problem series that need to be worked on

A somewhat accurate list of editors

Formatted version of the GCD Cheat Sheet

Information Storage Page - a place to put information for preservation

Editing vs. Indexing

Keep the two roles distinct in your mind. If you want to do "Indexer" type work, stay in the Indexing pane. Lots of editors have started indexing their books in the Database pane, which causes orphaned indexed issues that don't know who indexed them. If you are doing "Editor" type stuff, that's when you should use the Pending and Database panes. This likely no longer applies.

Approving Indexes

Go to the Pending pane. There are links to all the comics that have been finished by the indexer but not yet approved by the editors. There are also links to the indexer's e-mail so you can easily let them know that there is something wrong with their index and a preview link that will show you what the issue will eventually look like (almost, it's not the exact same as the regular issue view page, for instance it will show all the "none" entries as opposed to the regular one with recognizes those as irrelevant and edits them out). There is also an edit button which brings you to the page to edit the content if need be.

To approve an index, check the box on the right of the line that the index is on and then click the "Approve Selected" button at the bottom of the page. This is likely to be somewhat different, but similar

Things To Check When Approving an Index

• Cover sequence includes the total page count for the entire issue.
• Most (but not all) comics have a total GCD page count of 8n + 4. If a new indexer submits an index with a cover page count that is either an exact multiple of 8 or that is not a multiple of 4, the total page count should be confirmed before the index is approved.
• Writer field need not be filled in the cover sequence. Editor field only needs to be in the cover sequence unless there is a change.
• Check for required fields (or even entire sequences) that are missing. This can be hard to do sometimes, because most fields do not show up on the website unless they are filled in - so you have to remember to "look for what is not there" as well as looking at what has been entered.
• Here are some places to look:
  • Cover sequence - should have 4 fields filled in above the Format information:
  • Publisher, Publication date, Cover price, Total page count.
  • If less than 4 of these are present, or the Format information is missing or inadequate, the indexer should be contacted for more information.
• Stories/features table:
  • Interior sequences should have:
  • Page count - or explanation of missing count
  • Feature - unless a story is not part of an ongoing "strip", or the sequence is a minor Type like Ad or Promo
  • all Credits fields except Editor - with an exception for minor Types like Ads & Promos?
• Use the "Series info" link to compare the SeriesBegan and SeriesEnded dates on the Series information page with the Publication dates of the first & last issues. If these do not match, contact the indexer to find out whether the Series or Issue date information is wrong.
• Check the cover scan (if present). On recent comics, the credits printed on the cover are a good way to "spell-check" the indexed credits.
• Add up the interior sequence Page count fields. The sum of these should be 1-20 pages less than the Cover Page count field (depending on whether or not Ads & Promos have been indexed).
• Check that "Story" Type sequences are actually stories - since Story is the default Type, sometimes Text stories or other Types are indexed as a "Story" by accident. (If a "Story" has "none" in the Pencils & Inks fields, this is a good sign that something is wrong.)

Creating a Series

First ensure that the series doesn't already exist. Then click on the Database tab, and search for the publisher first and then click the Add Series link. Make sure you fill out both start and end years and start and end issue numbers, even if the series is ongoing. Use 9999 for the year and whatever the current issue number is for the issue. If either of these are blank, series updates may not take later on unless someone sees the blanks in these fields. this will be done differently

This then leads to a screen to add issues.

Adding Issues to an Existing Series

To add issues to a series, search for the series and drill down into it. There are two links, "add issue" and "add multiple". The easier method is to add multiple at once. This just takes a start number and and end number and fills in all the issues in between. This obviously won't fill in funky numbers (alpha, infinity, 1000000, 1.5, etc.). For that you need the add single issue link. The thing with that is that you have to make sure you enter the correct cover sort code. this will be done differently

A general rule is not to work ahead more than three months or so for a monthly series. Exceptions are mini-series, which are often set up in one go, as the final issue is already announced (although of course not certain, as the series may be expanded or cancelled prematurely).

Additional Resources for Editors

The sort code page. Cover sorting is completely separate from issue sorting. If covers sort in the wrong order, it can be very tricky to fix them. BY FAR, the easiest way is if the series only has "normal" issue numbers - 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.

Going back to the "add single issue" comments above where you need to enter the correct cover sort code, the stickyscan link is how you find out what that sort code should be. Say a series has issues 1 and 3 set up as skeletons. You want to add issue 2. You would obviously enter "2" as the issue number, but it is not safe to assume the value of the cover sort code. If you assume it should be "2", and cover sort codes for issues 1 and 3 are set to "01" and "03", the covers will eventually sort in the order 1-3-2. You need to go to the stickyscan page to check what 1 and 3 are set to and adapt the new issue 2's cover sort code accordingly.

Reserving Indexes to Other Indexers

this may not be necessary anymore at all

Is the site down?

PINGING THE SERVER At the command prompt, type "ping www.comics.org". The command prompt is reached, through Windows, by Start --> Programs --> Accessories --> Command prompt . ping reports whether or not a machine is reachable over the 'net.

If ping fails, it means either the machine is not running, or there is a problem with the network connection between you and it, or the machine's administrator has configured the machine to ignore ping (the latter is not the case with our server). If it succeeds, that means that the machine is up and there is a network path between you and it.

If ping succeeds but you can't access the main page, then that means there's a problem with the web service running on the machine.

If you can reach the main page, but can't access the database (the OI or the search pages), then the web server is running but either the database is down, the middleware is down, or one of the connections between the three is broken. The middleware (software that passes data from the web server to the database and back) in our instance is django.