What I'm trying to say is that it's important that every article makes it clear which facts are based on licensed works, and which are not.
I totally agree. As I said, the thing is that before more people started helping me out with it (and before I got my act together), the standards for pages were much looser. There's a lot of stuff left behind on various pages that I wouldn't write today the way I wrote them then. I correct those errors and oversights as I see them, or as they are pointed out to me, but there's no magic red button to do it overnight.
You seem like a reasonable person, Scrooge. I like that!
I guess the reason I find it troublesome is because potentially anything could qualify to end up on the wiki, as long as it reads and looks nice enough. This in turn is probably due to the fact that the first times I visited the wiki, I was under the impression that the information presented would be reliable (as in, from a licensed source). But I guess if the Home page would make it clearer that the wiki is a bit more liberal concerning that sort of thing, it would be alright.
However, a lot of the time people don't go to the Home page first - instead they google ... Hortense McDuck for example. If they stumble upon her Scrooge McDuck Wiki-article, they will miss out on the rules on the Home page. What I'm trying to say is that it's important that every article makes it clear which facts are based on licensed works, and which are not.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. The problem with terms like, "professional-grade ones (that is to say, ones made by a professional comics author — this being the case of Sarah Jolley — or ones that are indistinguishable from what you might find in an official comic book)" is that it's open to the biases of the wiki contributor. Who decides if something is "professional-grade" or not? On what basis would you accept something Jolley writes (who, if I understand correctly, has not officially published anything with Disney characters) and not, say, Robb's character of Gladstone's brother Sadstone (Robb being a published Disney author)? Ultimately, such arbitrary criteria result in a wiki that's more reflective of the owners' headcanon than a reliable official source of information.
I agree that the Scrooge McDuck Wiki should do a better job of delineating official fact from unpublished information, fan speculation, and the moderators' personal preferences. Perhaps putting them in separate sections of the page, as some other wikis do. Right now it's all mixed together, making it unreliable for serious researchers. As someone who knows a bit about the Duck-verse/comics-verse, I can usually distinguish between those categories of information, but a novice would have a hard time.
As far as the "No Hunting" Grandpa goes, he's never referred to as Grandpa *Duck*, and even refers to himself as "Pappy" at the end of the cartoon. So his exact relationship to Donald is unclear; stating that he and Humperdink Duck are the same character to the point of giving them a common wiki entry is a bit misleading, I think.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. The problem with terms like, "professional-grade ones (that is to say, ones made by a professional comics author — this being the case of Sarah Jolley — or ones that are indistinguishable from what you might find in an official comic book)" is that it's open to the biases of the wiki contributor. Who decides if something is "professional-grade" or not? On what basis would you accept something Jolley writes (who, if I understand correctly, has not officially published anything with Disney characters) and not, say, Robb's character of Gladstone's brother Sadstone (Robb being a published Disney author)?
As far as the version of the rule we've thus far had to apply go, there's no bias in it. It's a pretty open-and-shut criterion. Case in point: is Sarah Jolley a professional comic author? Yes. Ergo, the stories are covered. Are they intended to fit within regular Duck continuity rather than be self-confessed fanfics, what-ifs or parodies? No? Ergo, they are valid sources for in-universe articles.
In the case of the "professional-grade" variation of the rule, I admit it might be somewhat riskier, but again, it's not a rule that's never really been tested. If conflicts arise based on this rule at some point in the future, we could just jettison it, I suppose. A good safety precaution, in the meantime, might be that such cases have to be supported by at least two admins to pass muster?
On what basis would you accept something Jolley writes (who, if I understand correctly, has not officially published anything with Disney characters) and not, say, Robb's character of Gladstone's brother Sadstone (Robb being a published Disney author)?
—I have no idea what you're talking about here. Sadstone Gander is not an unlicensed character at all: he appeared in a story that actually got published, although it was censored so that Sadstone was now said to be Gladstone's cousin rather than brother. He is at any rate perfectly canonical on the Wiki, and we acknowledge him as Gladstone's twin brother despite the publisher's meddling, at that.
As it stands most anything that either Robb or Jolley comes up with, will be canonical on the Wiki. In the unlikely event that one of Robb's ideas contradicted one of Jolley's egregiously, the Jolley story would be downgraded to being covered as a non-canonical "what if". All seems fairly straightforward.
As far as the "No Hunting" Grandpa goes, he's never referred to as Grandpa *Duck*, and even refers to himself as "Pappy" at the end of the cartoon. So his exact relationship to Donald is unclear; stating that he and Humperdink Duck are the same character to the point of giving them a common Wiki entry is a bit misleading, I think.
There I simply don't agree with you. There's just enough wiggle room in the cartoon to see its Grandpa as Donald's great-grandfather or the like if you really want to, but if there had never been a Humperdink Duck for him to conflict with, I don't think anyone would think to question that he was meant to be the Grandpa Duck. Compare the fact that it's not impossible (the stories with flashbacks to their youths aside) for Gideon to be Scrooge's half-brother, but it's only a retroactive decision to try and smooth over the conflicts with Don Rosa's L&T.
And for the record, his name is Grandpa Duck. Not in the cartoon itself I'll grant you, but:
That being said, as I mentioned, we will be revising the way we cover the two Grandpas Duck on the Wiki sometime soon; not because I'm convinced that No Hunting on its own terms isn't enough to conclude that its "Grandpa" is Donald's Grandpa Duck, but becuase of Carpi's tree treating the two as separate individuals. I see it as a case similar to the Witch Child (which is a kettle of fish which we have yet to deal with, as a matter of fact).
—I have no idea what you're talking about here. Sadstone Gander is not an unlicensed character at all: he appeared in a story that actually got published, although it was censored so that Sadstone was now said to be Gladstone's cousin rather than brother. He is at any rate perfectly canonical on the Wiki, and we acknowledge him as Gladstone's twin brother despite the publisher's meddling, at that.
Okay, that was a bad example, resulting from my mistaken impression that the Sadstone story was never published. I remember Robb telling us about how his editors rejected his idea of giving Gladstone an identical twin brother, and wrongly assumed the story itself was rejected. So let me try to make my argument in a different way; suppose someone on this forum posted a script/storyboard/fully illustrated comic story about, say, Elvira Coot's childhood, including historical events, dates, and twelve siblings (Rosa never said Casey was her only sibling), that they had written purely for their own enjoyment, never intending it to be officially published. Would it automatically be accepted into the Scrooge McDuck Wiki? If not, on what basis (i.e., how will it be decided if it's "professional grade")? If so, then how is the Wiki not simply a repository of fan fiction/fan theories? Also, I'm not sure I'd automatically give Disney fan fiction by creators who may have published comics other than Disney higher regard than fan fiction by unpublished authors, but that's just my personal view.
One suggestion might be to give each "fact" on the Wiki a grade in terms of its canonicity: Grade 1, official and published, Grade 2, unpublished but suggested by an official creator (Angones or Rosa comments, for example), Grade 3, fan theory/speculation, etc.
And for the record, his name is Grandpa Duck. Not in the cartoon itself I'll grant you, but:
So let me try to make my argument in a different way; suppose someone on this forum posted a script/storyboard/fully illustrated comic story about, say, Elvira Coot's childhood, including historical events, dates, and twelve siblings (Rosa never said Casey was her only sibling), that they had written purely for their own enjoyment, never intending it to be officially published. Would it automatically be accepted into the Scrooge McDuck Wiki?
In your example, no. If an official Disney author writes something unlicensed but makes it clear that they're just goofing around and don't intend for their continuity-shaking story to be part of the wider Disney Comics Universe, then we might cover it, but it would be non-canonical. (See the "So, what isn't canonical?" scroll on this policy page: when an author doesn't think their story takes place in the Disney Comics Universe as we understand it, then obviously we're not going to argue.)
That is in fact something that's already come up: Don Rosa has shared his theory of what the end of Scrooge's life is like — that whole "he fakes his death and goes marry Goldie while hiding his Money Bin beneath the ocean" thing. However, it's only meant to apply to Don Rosa's personal headcanon, not be something that affects the universe other authors play around in. So while we make a note of it (or, rather, will once I find a good page to do so), it's not canonical.
On the otherhand, yes, if Rob or someone else posted such a story and said it was meant to be canon (or otherwise let us assume that), then it would be canonical.
One suggestion might be to give each "fact" on the Wiki a grade in terms of its canonicity: Grade 1, official and published, Grade 2, unpublished but suggested by an official creator (Angones or Rosa comments, for example), Grade 3, fan theory/speculation, etc.
This is very close to how things currently work; it is simply that the fact that some things are higher-tier than others only comes up in cases of conflicting information. In this case my inspiration was the Harry Potter Wiki's tiered canon.
I don't want to come off as unsavory or anything, but the amount of fan material used there is what drove me away from Picsou Wiki. I used to contribute there once upon a time (as Jérémie McDuich), but I ended up being pretty annoyed by the importance given, for example, to Gille Maurice's theories--"well known" or not, a fan is not an author. And since apparently fan fiction is now seen as "valid," it seems that the volume has been cranked up to eleven...
I don't want to come off as unsavory or anything, but the amount of fan material used there is what drove me away from Picsou Wiki. I used to contribute there once upon a time (as Jérémie McDuich), but I ended up being pretty annoyed by the importance given, for example, to Gille Maurice's theories--"well known" or not, a fan is not an author. And since apparently fan fiction is now seen as "valid," it seems that the volume has been cranked up to eleven...
Picsou Wiki's policies are not the $crooge McDuck Wiki; indeed, they've moved away from giving Maurice any mind lately, and don't cover Sarah Jolley's comics, unlike us. So maybe you could return to it now.
FWIW, we don't actually cover Gilles Maurice's tree as an independently canonical source.
Post by TheMidgetMoose on Oct 22, 2019 15:37:36 GMT
My personal opinion on fan works is that they shouldn't really be considered canonical at all. That's not to say that I don't think the Wiki should cover them. I think it's great that we document both official and unofficial works, but I don't think an unofficial work should be used as a source for information placed in another page. For example, if a highly advanced and well-written fanfiction stated that Donald and Gladstone hatched thirteen days a part, while we may make a page for that fanfiction, I don't think the Gladstone's infobox should now say, "Birth: May 27th or June 22nd, 1920" just because of the fan work. Once again, I think it's splendid that we do cover fan blogs and Sarah Jolley's comics, but I don't think we should use them as references on other pages.
No matter what I say or do, know that Jesus loves you.
Just noticed that in this story Cornelius Coot is strangely resembling Duckburg mayor. And, while in other translations he is called "Cornelius Coot" (I mean, his name in those countries), in the Italian one (first one published) he is called "Modestino Modesty Senior" and the mayor is "Modestino Modesty Junior", suggesting they are father and son. Is this something generated in the Italian translation? Was he Cornelius Coot in the Fallberg's original?