Number of Character Appearances IV

[Yana]

880: Belkar Bitterleaf (+1), Elan (+1), Haley Starshine (+1), Mr. Scruffy (+1), Roy Greenhilt (+1).

[Wrecan]

it's just lazy to ignore such an obvious mistake as this.

I'm tired of getting insulted because people don't agree with me. I'm tired of getting crap about this thread which is supposed ot be fun and people take wayyy too seriously.

It's not fun anymore. It's just become a game of nitpicking and denigrating.

Someone else should start a new thread they can update. I'm out.

[Bird]

You did a great job on this thread, Wrecan.

[Flame of Anor]

I'm tired of getting insulted because people don't agree with me. I'm tired of getting crap about this thread which is supposed ot be fun and people take wayyy too seriously.

It's not fun anymore. It's just become a game of nitpicking and denigrating.

Someone else should start a new thread they can update. I'm out.

I'm sorry you feel that way, Wrecan. I didn't mean to denigrate all your hard work just for one failing.

[137beth]

Not only do I think it's unreasonable, but I find it massively self-defeating as well. Dismissing any possible changes just because "it's too much work" is going to end with an inaccurate list, plain and simple. You might as well stop counting incidental characters altogether. If someone can provide clear evidence of a mistake, as I have above, and no one disagrees with it, why should we need to go back and check what was said at the time?

I agree that it might be an error, but I'm not convinced that your revision is accurate. Therefore, your claim that "no one disagrees with it" is ungrounded. This is part of the 99.9% of the time that I agree with Wrecan.

[Flame of Anor]

I agree that it might be an error, but I'm not convinced that your revision is accurate. Therefore, your claim that "no one disagrees with it" is ungrounded.

So you think that there is compelling evidence that one of the male clerics in #267 is a transvestite High Priestess? And that he/she should continue to be listed with five appearances, despite the fact that the appearances in #298 and #303 have been agreed, even by Wrecan (whom you agree with 99.9% of the time, remember), to be a separate character?

If your answer is going to be, "No, but I don't think we can implement Nimrod's Son's revision", I remind you that Nimrod's Son never said that no one disagrees with his revision. He said that no one disagrees that there is an error.

[Nimrod's Son]

I'm sorry you feel that way, Wrecan. I didn't mean to denigrate all your hard work just for one failing.

Ditto. This has always been one of my favourite threads on this board and it's one of very few that I check with any regularity these days. And that's the reason I contribute - to try and make the list as accurate as it possibly can be.

Wrecan, I never said anything disrespectful towards you, and I never suggested the mistake was yours in the first place. But it is a mistake nonetheless, and I spent a good deal of time searching through those comics and then providing links for them so that the working can be clear for all to see and so that as little work as possible would have to be done by yourself to correct them. If you see that as me disrespecting you, well, I'm sorry but I see it as just the opposite. Until very recently almost all corrections were greeted with a "Fixed! Thanks!"-type message from you, so we didn't really have much reason to suspect that corrections were unappreciated.

Until this argument, I thought you'd done an absolutely excellent job of maintaining this thread, and I still hope you'll reconsider. People taking things too seriously is what happens on this board, but in this thread it's kind of the point. If you're willing to ignore glaring mistakes just for the convenience of not having to examine a handful of comics and analyse a few people's critiques then there's not much point in the thread existing. Or at least it should come with a big disclaimer saying all numbers are approximate.

(And isn't discussing possible errors half the fun, anyway? Surely moreso than a straight counting game where instead of discussion we have nothing but a bunch of people trying to be the first to post the cast of the latest comic?)

I agree that it might be an error

There's no "might" about it; if we ignore the clothes, that cleric bears more of a resemblance to O-Chul than to the High Priest.

but I'm not convinced that your revision is accurate. Therefore, your claim that "no one disagrees with it" is ungrounded.

That is not a claim I ever made. There was an "if" in that sentence.

So, to make it plain at the risk of belabouring the point, I'm stating the following as facts for the record:

*The High Priest appears in five strips (plus a bonus strip in War & XPs). They are #303, #410, #412, #456 and #486.
*There is no High Priestess of Azure City, at least none that we have seen that has been identified as such, either in-comic or by the author elsewhere.
*There are two Azurite clerics that have three appearances each (#267, #283 and #284) but do not appear anywhere on Wrecan's list. One of them has a blue beard.
*The female cleric in #284 appears on both pages of the strip.

If you disagree with any part of these points, please say why, and provide evidence for your arguments. Otherwise, to be blunt, you not being sure doesn't add much to the discussion.

[Wrecan]

People taking things too seriously is what happens on this board, but in this thread it's kind of the point.

That's where I disagree. That's not the point, and I feel embarrassed and ashamed that I allowed the tenor of this threads degrade such that people could think it was a point.

As the FAQ said, this was originally a game. It was a game to see what characters had the most numbers. And it morphed into the fun of identifying characters as the comic progressed.

But at some point we got a new game. A game of people combing through the archives to find inaccuracies and errors and getting me to change those errors.

And that's when it stopped becoming a game and started becoming a chore. A laborious chore. Because it takes little effort to identify a character in a current strip, figure out if it's the same character as we've seen before, or we now know a character's name.

It's another thing to have to burrow through the archives to see if someone accurately found an error. That requires me to check the archives of these threads to see if this was discussed before, to go back tot he original comic to see if I agree with the error, to go to all related comic strips to make sure nothing was missed, to follow up with a thread divulging the results of this research. It is laborious, time-consuming, and distinctly not fun for me.

I tried being a good sport, because I liked managing this thread and it kept me engaged in the comic. But with increasing frequency, the archive-comic game has become more prevalent than the current-comic game. And, accordingly, my enjoyment of the comic has diminished exponentially as the archive-comic game became more prevalent. And as the archive grows, it will only become more and more prevalent.

So I've finally come to a conclusion. I don't like the archive-comic game. I am certain the thread is likely rife with errors that is only natural to occur when a thread is updated based on current comics.

If you're willing to ignore glaring mistakes just for the convenience of not having to examine a handful of comics and analyse a few people's critiques then there's not much point in the thread existing.

This makes me so sad. So sad to think that that people now think the only point of this thread is to make an accurate tally of the comics and not have fun identifying the characters as they are listed. So sad to think that people think I have an obligation to scour through the archives to maintain this thread.

If you disagree with any part of these points, please say why, and provide evidence for your arguments. Otherwise, to be blunt, you not being sure doesn't add much to the discussion.

You win, counselor. I look forward to you starting the next iteration of this thread which I am certain will be more meticulously maintained than mine was.

Just click quote on the initial post and cut and paste the contents to a new thread you create. (Do the same for the second and third posts.) Then ask the mods to lock this one. Easy-peasy.

Good luck.

[Fawkes]

Well, this could have gone better.

[Cizak]

But I guess you're right. There is no point to this thread existing as I am willing to ignore mistakes for my own convenience. I have, apparently, been a selfish, selfish person all these years for maintaining this thread. Shame on me.

Come on, now. I can understand your feelings, but don't make it seem worse than it is by putting words in people's mouths. Let's not go down that road.

[Wrecan]

Let's not go down that road.

You're right. Text deleted

[Flame of Anor]

Well, thanks for all your hard work, Wrecan. I'm sorry it had to end in acrimony.

Nimrod's Son, would you like to start the new thread? If not, I suppose I could do it. I'd rather not be the new permanent caretaker, but I wouldn't mind doing it on an interim basis, until someone else decides to take it on.

[Nimrod's Son]

And that's when it stopped becoming a game and started becoming a chore. A laborious chore. Because it takes little effort to identify a character in a current strip, figure out if it's the same character as we've seen before, or we now know a character's name.

It's another thing to have to burrow through the archives to see if someone accurately found an error. That requires me to check the archives of these threads to see if this was discussed before, to go back tot he original comic to see if I agree with the error, to go to all related comic strips to make sure nothing was missed, to follow up with a thread divulging the results of this research. It is laborious, time-consuming, and distinctly not fun for me.

I completely understand. However, there was little to no indication you felt this way until very recently. I apologise for my part in this all the same, but for the few years I've been following this thread, I've always been under the impression that the point of the thread was both of those "games" equally.

(You didn't have to do all that checking yourself, though. You didn't have to do any checking yourself. You took n11's word for the count in the first place; you took the word of several people posting appearances for bonus content you hadn't read; all you had to do to maintain an up-to-date list if you didn't want to go to any trouble yourself is to wait until a consensus forms and then go with that.)

I am certain the thread is likely rife with errors that is only natural to occur when a thread is updated based on current comics.

I'm far from certain of that. There are probably a few, but having a number of people checking, as we do, means there's a good chance they'll be picked up over time. It's less likely with characters who have very large numbers of appearances, of course. But I still think the list is impressively close, and that the mistake I outlined above wouldn't take much correcting. I do rather think you're overstating how often people post to gripe about past inaccuracies, and I disagree that it's usually necessary to even glance at out-of-date discussion threads when 90% of the time it's fairly obvious one way or another anyway. But you've made it clear you don't like correcting older entries regardless, and that's your prerogative.

This makes me so sad. So sad to think that that people now think the only point of this thread is to make an accurate tally of the comics and not have fun identifying the characters as they are listed. So sad to think that people think I have an obligation to scour through the archives to maintain this thread.

I don't think anything of the sort, and I've seen nothing to suggest anyone else here does either. As I said, however, if this was intended from the start to be a fun game with only a nod towards accuracy, you should have plastered that first post with disclaimers stating as such. Because I've been fairly active in this thread for a few years now, and I'd never noticed. It can't have escaped your attention that this is a forum where most people take things very seriously indeed.

I've no idea why you're taking this so personally though. People, myself included, have been nothing but complimentary of your efforts. It seems it was me who inadvertantly kicked this whole fuss off, but I only posted in the first place to point out that the very same error that you'd just (seemingly happily) corrected also applied to another character in the same panel. That's all. If you'd replied "Yeah, you're right, but I can't be bothered fixing any more mistakes that old", you'd have got no argument from me, because as I said, it's your thread. I only started arguing when you told me that a lack of discussion from the time meant there was a good chance I was wrong, because I knew with 100% certainty that I wasn't.

Well, this could have gone better.

Yes, couldn't it just.

Nimrod's Son, would you like to start the new thread? If not, I suppose I could do it. I'd rather not be the new permanent caretaker, but I wouldn't mind doing it on an interim basis, until someone else decides to take it on.

"Like" is much too strong a word there. I'd "like" Wrecan to carry on, but it doesn't look like that's on the table. If it is, I'll pick that, even if it means no past corrections, ever: I didn't have any intention of hijacking anything here. If people want Wrecan to keep running it according to what he's just said, fine, I'll slink off into the background. I personally think the thread should make every effort to be as accurate as possible, and I gather you do too, but most other users of this thread are keeping kinda quiet. I have no idea if our view is the majority one, and if everyone else is fine with what Wrecan said then by all means forget I even said anything in the first place.

(Although I would snarkily point out that Wrecan conceding the point as he did above now makes the list officially inaccurate rather than potentially inaccurate. )

So yeah, I'd much rather hear what everyone else thinks before I even consider starting a new thread myself.

[Flame of Anor]

So yeah, I'd much rather hear what everyone else thinks before I even consider starting a new thread myself.

This means you, assorted thread-followers.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

This means you, assorted thread-followers.

Too late. Martianmister already started a new one, and this thread needs to be locked.

GW

[137beth]

Too late. Martianmister already started a new one, and this thread needs to be locked.

GW

Or it means the other one needs to be locked. You can't just arbitrarily start a new thread and expect everyone to view it as the main one. If I started my own, that wouldn't mean everyone would have to heed my thread as the only one allowed unless people agreed. I thought we were suppose to try to agree on a thread curator, not give the thread control to the first person who copy/pastes the old thread

[ti'esar]

To be honest, I'm inclined to support martianmister. This entire situation has been... kind of ridiculous, and it's probably best now to just move past it.

[Nimrod's Son]

To be honest, I'm inclined to support martianmister.

Agreed. I'd have preferred it if we'd put it to the vote, but since the new thread's up already we might as well use it.

[137beth]

Agreed. I'd have preferred it if we'd put it to the vote, but since the new thread's up already we might as well use it.

I don't think that's really fair. I think we should still put it up for a vote...
even if it is still fairly likely martianmister will win
There's not much reason not to at least try voting.