Board Thread:Policies/@comment-18172179-20170103063927

The template is responsible for the small arrows that you see to the sides of the characters' names in many comics, most prominently in those Golden, Silver and Bronze Age comics. There are also some Modern Age comics with these arrows, but most recently, we have stopped using them. And to say that there is a reason for that, would be an understatement.

These arrows would point you to the "Next" or "Previous" appearance of the characters and they started working in the DC Database back in 2011. In those days, things were simpler and users were a bit... driven. Case in point: there are over 10.000 + apn links and 90% of those were included by one user. Nowadays, this person is long gone and there is no way to be certain where all this information came from. And this is where the problem starts.

Recently, there have been several discussion over the actual usefulness of the template among admins and users alike. A few months back, the suggestion to eliminate the template came up during an off-topic discussion (see here) and it was later expanded here.

The common ground is that the template needs to go. And now, here are some of the reasons why:

Subjectivity The template doesn't make any distinction between chronological appearances and canon appearances. There are hundreds of examples across the site, where characters start appearing in multiple comics at the same time and the apn links start jumping between "in-universe" appearances and then return to list the chronological appearances according publication.

As someone else put it: "It opens the door to guessing a story order when none is explicit." - Byfield

Conflicting Information

Similar to the user who included all the apn links, there was another user who included the appearances of the characters in the "Notes" section of the comics, although to a lesser extent. There are many cases in which the information contradicts each other and there is no way to tell for sure which one is right. Take a look at and notice how some of the notes contradict the apn links and viceversa. That is just one example among many and it all goes back to the subjectivity issue.

Inconsistency

There are occasions when a "Next" link will take you to one comic, but when you want to return to the "Previous" appearance, the link will not take you back to the first comic, but other completely different. I explained it with an example in the aforementioned discussion link.

Zero Distinction

The apn links will take you to the previous and/or next appearance of the characters, even if the characters appeared only in one panel cameo or in a flashback! How is that useful for someone who wants to read relevant appearances of a certain character? A: it is not.

These and many other reasons have been discussed over the years about apn, and frankly we've had enough. If you're interested, here's a list of previous discussions on the subject: Discussion #1 (How to use apn) Dicsussion #2 (Apn is confusing)

And all other discussion where we just couldn't keep working with apn:

Discussion #3, Discussion #4, Discussion #5, Discussion #6 and Discussion #7

Wait, why not fix it?

As you already know, there are 10.000+ apn links and tyring to go over them is not practical and not rational. There is no definitive list of when and where characters appeared and the whole thing becomes a fool's errand. Besides, most of the admins suspect that all the appearances were taken from the somewhat flawed DCU Guide Chronologies. Which just adds one more reason to remove this tool. If there is an online resource with that information, why should he have that as well?

The Solution

In the upcoming weeks, we will redirect all apn links to the standard template, which is used to categorize appearances without further information, similar to what we've been doing with all the New 52 and Rebirth comics. All comics will look like, where the link to the character is more than enough.

Last Words

This is just a way of informing the community about a decision that has been largely discussed and a consensus has been reached. With the disappearance of apn, we won't rely on subjective and arbitrary lists about the appearances of characters. Such lists should not be included anywhere in the comic page, not in the synopsis, nor in the notes section. The list of appearances written in the notes that already exist will remain there until further notice. 