Editor wiki

This page is NOT updated and is retained for historical reference only. The current page is at https://docs.comics.org/wiki/Editor_wiki .

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.

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. Do not approve books in the database screen by using the dropdown This is really important, since it can lead to orphaned indexes that aren't attributed to any indexer. Never approve indexes from inside the database. Approve from the pending list only.

Things To Check When Approving an Index

• When approving an index in the pending queue, do not forget to check the key date. This is one of the most commonly overlooked fields. Always check the EDIT THIS ISSUE to make sure the keydate and other information is correct.
• 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:
  • If the numbering here is not consecutive, (or contains duplicate numbers), then there is a problem.
  • 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 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.

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

There are couple of additional editor pages you should know about. Email an editor for these links.

One is the keydate page, where you can see all the issues in a series and their keydates. The keydate field is used to sort the issues in the issue matrix. The format is YYYY.MM.DD to mirror the date on the issue.

If you want to quickly check an entire series or run of issues for problems with KeyDates, check the "See index matrix" link from the Series information page - if the indexed and/or pending issues are not in the proper order, a KeyDate error is usually the cause of it.

Another is the cover 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. For these, go to the regular cover gallery page and you should see a link "Good riddance, fix this mess". This will automatically sort all the covers numerically. DO NOT use this link for any series with "odd" issue numbers like 1000000, 0, alpha, etc. They will all sort at the beginning or the end and it will be a huge pain to fix them.

To fix series with odd covers, use the above stickyscan page. To change a cover sort code, you will need to:

1. save a copy of the large scan to your local hard drive
2. go into the OI Database pane, bring up the issue and click the link underneath the cover to delete the cover
3. go to the stickyscan page and change the cover sort code
4. upload the cover that you saved in step a

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

In the OI Database pane again, when viewing in issue you may see dropdown lists to select indexers (indexed pre-OI issues and new skeletons) and issue status (all issues). To reserve a new issue to someone, just select their name in the indexer dropdown and change the status to Initiated. This is also where you can change a Pending index back to Initiated. It's not uncommon that an editor is working with an indexer on a pending index and some other editor comes along and doesn't see the same problem and approves the index. It's usually best if you're working with an indexer to punt the issue out of the Pending queue so no one can make that mistake. Never UPGRADE an issue via this dropdown. When I mentioned earlier about remembering to do your indexing work in the Indexing pane instead of the Database pane, this is what I was talking about. Some editors have forgotten and entered all the sequence info in the Database pane and then just changed the dropdown to "Approved". DO NOT DO THIS. This is bad. This is wrong. We need a newer, stronger word like badwrong or badong.

Updating the number of issues in a series

If you delete an issue from a series, the number of issues on the search.lasso page doesn't update automatically. You can get it to update if you do an edit on the series page in the database. Something minor like adding a period will do the trick.

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 Lasso.