Staff : How To Submit

When you've finished your review, it will appear automatically in the Comics & Books Database. Additionally, if you're working on a current/active title then the final result of your review will be that your review appears pretty much intantly on the Main Page under "Latest Reviews". If you're working on a "Looking Back" review, then you'll have to wait until the next issue of PPP is released.

Here are the steps you can follow one by one to get your first review written.

The Basics

There are two passwords you need:

• The shared "front door" username/password. This is just a "Joe sent me" password, it gets you on to the "dev" machine and lets you browse the "dev" copy of the website, but it's read-only. A pop-up box will ask you for this when you enter the "dev" machine.

  Enter the shared "front door" password at the dialog that looks like this:

  

• Your "personal" password. This is your very own password which identifies you. This actually allows you to create new content, and let's us know who created what so we can give you fair credit. You'll be asked for this by a "yellow form", which will also prompt you to select your name from a pull-down menu.

  Enter your "personal" password when you see a form like this:

  

Also, if you get to one of the "yellow forms" and your name isn't in the pulldown menu, then somebody screwed up, and forgot to add you. Go ask for help again.

Add Your Issue To The Database

Note that you can't actually create new titles, only a system administrator can do that. All you can do is create a new numeric issue which follows directly from the previous code. E.g. if #15 exists, you can create #16 and #17. But that's all you need most of the time.

So, let's create an issue. In the Comics & Books Database find the title page for that title. If there's more than one page of issues for that title, go to the last page. Scroll down to the bottom of the table containing all the issues, and there should be a link named "Create entry for [Title] #[Next-Issue]".

If there's no such link, then it means that either the title isn't marked as "Active", in which case you need to contact a site admin and get them to tweak the title to flag it as "Active". Alternatively, if the last issue code isn't a number then this trick won't work and you need a site admin again.

Assuming that the link is present, then click it, and you should see one of the infamous "yellow forms" which provide the site editing features. If this is your first visit, you'll need to select your name from the pulldown and enter your password. You'll need cookies enabled. After doing this once, cookies will remember your personal password for next time.

You're now at the "Issue Edit" form. There you'll see slots to enter the story name, the credits (separated by commas), the cover price, and the cover date (which is normally determined sequentially from the previous issue).

Enter the info, submit, and there you go. An automated process leaps into action. Give it a few minutes and you should be able to go back to the title page, refresh the browser, and see the new issue.

Note that all existing issues have a tiny "Edit" link that allows staff to edit the info for a title. Handy if you're the kind of person who likes to fix errors in the site database... and we hope you are!

Anyhow, with your issue now in the database, you can proceed to uploading the cover, and writing the review!

Uploading Covers

Click on that "Submit" link, and you should see one of the infamous "yellow forms" which provide the site editing features. If this is your first visit, you'll need to select your name from the pulldown and enter your password. You'll need cookies enabled. After doing this once, cookies will remember your personal password for next time.

This is the "Cover Upload" form. There's a file selector that lets you specify where the cover scan is located on your machine. Browse to that file, then click Submit. But FIRST, just check that your cover scan is correct!

Cover scans should be at 75 dpi. The file size on disk should be about 100kb, if it's too big then please drop the quality to give ~100kb file. Highly detailed scans can go as high as 140kb in extreme cases, but the system won't accept any file over 140kb, it will figure that you made an error with the resolution or the file quality.

The upload will also check that your image is 700-800 pixels tall and 450-550 pixels wide (which is standard modern comic size at 75 dpi). If you're reviewing a book or magazine which is non-standard size, you'll need to mail the scan to a site admin and get them to drop it on the system for you.

But such problems aside, your scan should upload to the "dev" site, an automated process should kick in, and within a few minutes you should see your thumbnail next to the issue number when you refresh the title page!

With an issue in the database, a cover scan uploaded, it's time to write a review. Actually, you can write a review even if there's no scan, which is handy just in case you don't have a scanner and you're dependent on somebody else to do your scans for you.

Writing Reviews

Click on that "Submit" link, and you should see one of the infamous "yellow forms" which provide the site editing features. If this is your first visit, you'll need to select your name from the pulldown and enter your password. You'll need cookies enabled. After doing this once, cookies will remember your personal password for next time.

This is the "Review Edit" form. The form has a template, which is filled with handy hint text for each section. If you decide that you don't need to enter something for an optional section, please delete the hint text just to be tidy. If you're still not sure what each section is for, go read some existing reviews to get a feel for how a review is structure. Of course, everybody has their own style, but it's nice at least if we can all use the sections for similar sort of things - that makes it easier for people using the database!

At the top of the review form is a "Lookback" menu. Lookbacks are what we call reviews of the older issues. If you are reviewing an older issue, you'll need to decide which Lookback category the review fits into best. If you are reviewing a recent issue, then do not put it into a Lookback category, just leave that option menu untouched.

After you fill it all in, hit the Submit button. Oh, I do recommend that you actually use a text editor on your own computer to write the text, so that you get to keep a copy. Sometimes the online system has a glitch, and loses the data. In that case, it's great for you to have a saved copy in a "review.txt" file safely on your own machine. Saves you typing it in all over again.

Anyhow, after you submit, the automatic process kicks in again. You should get an email copy of the review sent to you for confirmation. Also, after a few minutes background work, a refresh of the title should show a link to your review! Also, if you've just reviewed a current title, and if there's a cover scan, then a refresh on the main page of the "dev" site should show your new review under the "Latest Reviews". Congratulations!

Of course, all of these changes are only on the "dev" site. But the next time one of the site admins starts a resync the the main "www" site, your proud work will appear. If you drop me an email, I'm always happy to run a sync whenever there's a new review.

As a final note, every reviewer does have their own style, and that's cool. Some reviewers write lots of detail, others skim. Some are serious, some a light and funny. Just choose a style that suits you. If people hate it, they'll let you know.

How long should it take to write a review? I personally find that even a quick review takes me at least an hour for a single comic issue. A detailed review can take 3 or more hours. Eric Engelhard's reviews of Spidey Super Stories must take more like eight hours each month, as do Al's detailed "From the Beginning" looking back reviews.

I hate to say it, but there's quite a few people who decide that writing a review each month sounds like great fun, but then really struggle to actually get around to it on a regular basis. If you get given one of the active titles and then fail to deliver, we will fire your butt. But, as long as you know what you're in for, I'm sure you'll be fine! Welcome on board.

Hyperlinks in Reviews

You can help. Please avoid putting off-site links in your review, unless it's a special occasion. Links to bulletin board items, news articles, etc. They take you a minute to link. At some stage in the future they'll take me ten minutes to track down and edit out when the link dies, or the DNS entry is bought out by a pr0n directory.

Also! For internal links, please don't create your own <a href=...> markup. Instead, use the {{ }} and [[ ]] notation which does all the magic linking for you. Even better, if the thing you're linking to gets moved or deleted, the {{ }} and [[ ]] links will automatically change and/or create warnings as necessary. It seems like magic, but I'm going to take you behind the scenes and teach you how the trick is really done. We don't actually saw anybody in half at all.

In your review, when you want to create a link to a comic title, or an issue, or a story arc, then you can write something linke the following:

• {{Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 2)}} - points to the index page for a title.
• {{Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 2) #36}} - points to the review for an issue (if it has a review), or else to the issue entry on the title page.
• {{Hydra & Go Seek}} - figures out which issue you want by tracking down the story name.
• {{Heart of the Spider}} - figures out that this is an arc, and points to the first issue in the arc.

Similarly, you create a character link by using [[ ]], e.g. [[Professor Stromm]], or [[Green Goblin 2]], etc. You can use any entry name defined for that character. The "The" is optional, e.g. [[The Green Goblin]] works just fine.

If any of these autolinks don't work, just email, and I'll make the system smarter until it works how you need it to work.

Editing Characters

Note that we don't do Ultimate Spider-Man, or Spider-Man 2099, or Spider-Man TV Show characters, or MC2 Universe, or any characters that are out of regular continuity. When we've finished more than half of the regular continuity characters, then we'll talk about expanding the scope!

What You Should Review

That means that you'll need to pick out issues that currently have no review written for them. There's still a few thousand of those, so we're not yet getting close to running out of options. But there are a few things to bear in mind:

Any recent issue of a Active Spider-Man title, or a Spider-Man Spin-Off will almost certainly have an allocated reviewer, called the title "Owner". You can see who the title Owner is by looking at the top of the title summary page. If a title has an allocated Owner, then you shouldn't go reviewing recently released issues of that title. The exception is of course that if a supposedly "Active" title is actually a few issues behind, the reviewer might be struggling. Feel free to contact the site editor, point out the problem, and offer assistance.

At the other end of the scale is "The Forbidden Zone". Any comic with a date before September 1971 (i.e. Amazing Spider-Man #100) is reserved for Al Sjoerdsma, our longest-serving reviewer, and writer of the "From The Beginning" series of Looking Back reviews. That's Al's special preserve, so just leave it be.

Other than that, it's pretty much first-come, first-served. There's bound to be the occasional conflict, but we'll deal with them as they arise. But in general, just pick an issue that has no review, and go for it. The only other problem arises if you really, really want to write a review for an issue that already has a review. Of course, there's not much point in re-doing existing work just for the sake of things. But there are a couple of reasons why you might justifiably want to replace an existing review.

Firstly, the existing review might be rubbish. There are a few reviews that were written almost as "placeholders", and there are others that were written by reviewers that had more enthusiasm than skill. Secondly, if you're reviewing an entire title, you might find that there are one or two existing reviews just ruining an otherwise clear run of empty review slots. I agree that it's nice if a single reviewer can review an entire title, though if the existing review is well-written, I'm loathe to replace it..

In either case, if you think there's a good reason to replace an existing review, please do talk to me first, don't just go ahead and trample it. We'll talk it over, and see what's the best thing to do on a case by case basis.

Staff Mailing List

That's a manual process, so if you've done your first couple of reviews and I haven't put you on the list yet, do remind me!

Issues That Refuse To Appear

The reason is that, by default, a new title or issue will not appear in the Spider-Man comics database. Why should it? It will appear only if one or more of the following applies:

1. One of the "Spidey Flags" is set for the title. Those are the checkboxes at the top of the title-edit form. The two magic flags are "Spider-Man" (indicates a core title) and "Spider-Man Spin-Off" (e.g. Spider-Girl).

2. The word "Spider-Man" appears in the Story, Summary, Arc, SMURF code, etc. for that issue. Alternatively, for non-numeric codes it can appear in the Info field. There are other phrases that trigger this also, like "Peter Parker", "Mary Jane", "Scarlet Spider".

3. A review has been written for this issue. Of course, if the issue doesn't appear in the database, you'll need to be tricky if you want to write a review to make it appear!

There's one exception to (2) which is worth mentioning - the "No Spider-Man" trick. You can safely put "No Spider-Man" in a summary, without it accidentally making the issue appear in the database. Unless! Last exception. The "Spider-Man" flag on a title is more powerful than "No Spider-Man" in a summary. I.e. MTU #32 appears in the database.

Late Reviews

If you are over a month late, i.e. there are now two issues of your title waiting to be reviewed, then I will look at finding a guest reviewer to write those reviews. I will usually email you and give you a day or two to catch up, but not always.

If reviews are regularly late, then I'll have no choice but to give your title to somebody else. I'll probably use psychology to make you feel bad as well. Don't say you weren't warned!

If you're only reviewing old issues, i.g. for our Looking Back section, then it's a different story. You can work at your own pace. But if I see that you haven't uploaded any reviews in the past six months, then I will probably de-activate your login and mark you as a "Former" staff member.

Tips & Tricks

• Don't forget to put <p> at the end of each paragraph.

• Always put a space after "." and ",".

• When creating a new title, remember to put a date on the first issue.

• When entering NM Values, round to the nearest 25c. E.g. $3.00, not $2.99.

• Don't bother entering Arc information if the entire Limited Series is one story arc.