Wow. When faced with the problem of indoctrinating newbies, my immediate response is, "why did we make this thing so seemingly arbitrary and slavishly devoted to The Great Superman Book by Fleisher?"
Telle, that's an excellent question and lately I've been wondering the same thing myself.
I must confess, half the time I think of the Golden Age Superman as the Earth-2 Superman! It involves a different mindset to think about E-2 adventures only existing post-1970 (or post-1961 if we are feeling charitable).
I am also beginning to feel that our arbitrary choice of canon titles will have to be expanded at some point to include the JLA, at the very least.
I have recently been considering opening up the canon to the new post-infinite crisis books but then I began to have serious doubts about the 1986 cut-off date entirely - that's
twenty years ago and Supermanica runs the risk of becoming completely obselete.
And I wonder about limiting the canonical sources to specific comic books. I think it's time to stop trying to be the Catholic Church, and to be more ecumenical in our approach. I think Supermanica should be open to any and all Superman stories from all media and from all eras. The published stories, the unpublished stories (like
K-Metal and the
secret origin of the Legion Clubhouse), the radio show, the dailies, all the TV shows, all the movies, the Maggin novels and short stories, etc. Superman is bigger than what we few think he should be.
This would mean that, for instance, instead of just having celebrity articles about Don Rickles and Orson Welles, we could also have entries for Lucy Ricardo and for Jerry Seinfeld. We could put the Mole Men back in, we can include the events of
All-Star Superman, the Fleischer 'toons and the Spider Lady from the Kirk Alyn serial.
Some here have complained that if we did this, the Iron Agers would take over. They wouldn't take over - there's far too much non-Iron Age content that they could be swamped with - but so what if they tried? Let them have their say, but keep a leash on them.
That's the way that wikis work. The people who care are the people who control the content. If some Iron Age kid comes in and writes about Superman killing the PZ criminals - and if you don't like it - then you'd have options:
Just be obnoxious and delete it;
Be more polite and delete it because he neglected to cite his references (and
cite this as the reason for its deletion);
Reword it to tone it down and make it more objective;
Just ignore it and let him take over;
Bury it amidst twenty pages of Silver and Bronze Age goodness detailing all the many times that Superman has quoted his code against killing, the times it was stated that he'd never killed and never would kill, the times that he has exiled himself to the moon or somewhere back in the past for the benefit of humanity after mistakenly believing that he had killed someone, etc. Instead of just complaining about what's happening on Supermanica - do something about it! Add more of what you like, delete what you don't like, and discuss the whys and wherefores on the article discussion pages.
In this way, the wiki's contents will be determined by who cares most. This sort of set-up also encourages discussion and cooperation and seems to work extremely well on Wikipedia. People have to hammer things out.
If all references are cited, and all contradictions clearly explained and all conflicting stories are allowed and presented in an objective manner, then the choice on what is canonical is left to the ultimate authority: the reader. Just make sure that if
you think something is important, that it's there.
I believe that the Great Superman Book is an excellent guide on how to handle this: All conflicts are mentioned.
In addition to using the "talk" feature more often, we should add more articles in "Supermanica" to expand on the differences between fandom's view of the canon and Supermanica's view. Another area of clarity would maybe be the actual Ages --fans love to dispute these dates and maybe we could explain our own take. Or does this invite too much deviation from our main project?
I think that for Supermanica to succeed, such "meta" discussion pages are absolutely necessary. People need to know and understand what the rules and guidelines are, and they need to have the opportunity to participate in the creation of same.
For the moment I will try to be more diligent in welcoming newcomers/policing entries as well --I've been pretty dormant on Supermanica lately but maybe over the Holidays? The FAQ is a good idea, as is greater clarity about E-2. Maybe we could work on a lengthier, Fleisher-style article on the subject.
Sounds great, I look forward to seeing it.
I also think people click on the articles hyperlink pretty quickly. I think that there should be a hyperlink to this page on the homepage in the text, maybe linked to text saying "read these articles before adding entries" or something similar.
http://superman.nu/wiki/index.php/Category:SupermanicaAnd I do like the Earth 1 and 2 article, maybe just a reference to its 1960s history, and a definite comic that shows the first appearance of the Earth-2 Superman in the JLA along with saying that this is not a part of the canonical references for Supermanica.
I agree, these are good ideas.