The Way of the Editor:

Dude, Where’s My Correction?

The Editor explains sickness in the office, correction points, and more

2008 has started out as a crowded year already, even for me. In addition to vast new numbers of international titles we’ve now added to the database (see previous entry), we’re also getting in record numbers of corrections from users, who’ve hotly contested everying from circulation years to character name formatting. Their continuing battle over the proper, “true,” way to index a comic book should be rages on in my inbox and on the forums everyday.

And actually, that’s okay.

The user response and enthusiasm since we started the forums has been, I think, amazing. It’s actually very gratifying for me to see how far the user forums we implemented a year and a half ago have taken off. I was the one originally pushing for it, so it’s something of a relief to see people really getting into the community spirit of the whole deal, sharing tech advice, talking about comics, and in our recent turn of conversations, indulging in my need to start conversations about pie. All of this, plus corrections, has certainly given me a lot more to work through in the mornings on various variant cover corrections, checking alias names of authors, and so on.

But what has been troubling me lately, and I’m rather embarrassed to say this, is an unexpected hacking cough of death around the office that mandated roughly half a week of forced vacation, plus reduced hours at the office. Pete had to convince me repeatedly that until I get better at making my saving throws, I should really just go home and crawl into bed and keep my germs to myself. Which is for the best, since unmonitored I tend to wander regularly into the office while running high fevers saying things like, “No, I feel fine! Other than the cough, I feel *HACK*COUGH*CRUMPLES OVER* just fine!”

What really bugs me, though, is anything and everything that keeps me from clearing off the many piles of work on my desk anyway. Even before my forced cold vacation, I’d already been dividing my time between international comics (of which there is still a medium sized pile of titles and issues and prices to short through), my regular editing duties, answering questions on the forums, processing corrections, and prepping for Wizard World. So it’s no wonder people have been asking, “Why isn’t my correction score going up?!” And the answer, which I’m putting here so very ineloquently, is just that, “Your correction is really in the queue, and I’m really sorry if we haven’t looked at it yet!”

But please keep in mind that we’re also getting very strict these days about following the exact ComicBase formatting conventions, and will often reject valid submissions if they are formatted incorrectly because our staff members just don’t have enough time to go and alter each and every correction you submit by hand. It also helps to send in indicia and cover scans in to the editor when submitting new titles that may be under dispute, and overall just a good policy to submit all new cover scans for any issue or title you submit that we did not have before. Make sure to check the indicia before submitting that you have the right name listed. I’ve lost count of how many well-intentioned title and issue submission I’ve received which were really for some other issue already indexed in ComicBase. But I still have to treat all corrections that come in as legitimate corrections unless I find something concrete that disproves the indexing claim. So if you have a track record of submitting erroneous information, and have never sent in any indicia scans to back up your claims, just be aware that your corrections will not be given as much weight as someone who does send in proof, especially if there’s no readily available published material to back you up.

Also, corrections generally get taken care of and added to the system in 2-3 weeks. If your submission hasn’t made it in by then and you receive no word from us, it is very likely that it was rejected. If you think this was in error, you are welcome to contact me via e-mail to clarify and I’ll be happy to help.  (Incidentally, deleting notes from the Notes field should almost always involve a direct e-mail to the editor.) New titles and issues can sometimes take a little bit longer depending on how much time I have to look into it.

A good part of the office will be out for Wizard World next week—come visit us there!—so we’ll be down to a skeleton crew in-house and that might mean more delays. But as always, if you have a pressing correction or content related question, direct it to me and I’ll try to get back to you within a few days.

All the Best,

The Editor

---