The International Informal Anti-Dupe Alliance

The Anti-Dupe Alliance Parties,

Determined, to put an end to the useless and redundant dupes plaguing Comicvine.com that create confusion and irritation, that are developed on a daily basis despite the presence of existing pages already in development,

Believing, it necessary to do their utmost to contribute in an efficient and coordinated manner to face the challenge of removing dupes existing throughout Comicvine.com, and to assure their destruction and the prevention of future dupery,

Wishing to do their utmost in providing assistance for the care and rehabilitation of pages besmirched by dupes, including the combining of existing pages with their dupe counterparts,

Recognizing that a total eradication of dupes would also be an important confidence-building measure,

Wishing to draw attention to the existence and development of irritating dupe pages,

Welcoming furthermore the measures taken over the past months, both unilaterally and multilaterally, aiming at prohibiting, restricting or suspending the use and production of dupes,

Emphasizing the desirability of attracting the adherence of all members to this Alliance, and determined to work strenuously towards the promotion of its universalization in all relevant fora,

Desiring to one day have the power to delete/combine pages and united in our disdain for their continued existence,

Affirming that absent power to hunt the dupes to extinction, the Alliance will continue to point them out and possibly mock them, in hopes that they will be deleted/combined by the mods,

Have agreed as follows:

• Article 1

General obligations

1. Each Alliance Party undertakes never under any circumstances:

    1. To use dupes; 2. To develop or produce, directly or indirectly, dupes; 3. To assist, encourage or induce, in any way, anyone to engage in any activity prohibited to a  Party under this Convention.

2. Each State Party undertakes to destroy or ensure the destruction of all dupes in accordance with the provisions of this Convention.

3. Article 2

Definitions

1. "Dupe" means any page mine designed to pertain to an individual character, creator, team, issue, volume, event, concept, location, object, or story arc and that will be redundant with an existing developed page.

2. Article 3

Exceptions

1. Notwithstanding the general obligations under Article 1, the retention of a number of character page dupes for the development of pages when unrelated characters, etc. share the same name, or alias or secret identity pages, is permitted. The amount of such dupes shall not exceed the minimum number absolutely necessary for the above-mentioned purposes.

2. Article 4

Destruction of dupes

Except as provided for in Article 3, each Anti-Dupe Alliance Party undertakes to destroy or ensure the destruction of all dupes it knows of or comes across, within their knowledge, after pointing out the dupe in the delete/combine forum and providing adequate time for protest or reply that it is not actually a dupe.

• Article 5

There is no Article 5

Co-Sponsors:

Shatterstar, Le Francais, asxz, Fesak

Post Edited:2007-05-16 08:30:21

Too many words.

Soooo... what's going on?

It's way to early in the morning to read that much text. Cliff's notes, please?
Post Edited:2007-05-16 10:30:27

Quick version based on hardly any reading:

Article 1: You

Article 2: Dupe

Article 3: Murphy

Article 4: Die

Article 5: Nothing to see here, move along.

(Seriously though, this is a pretty good, if tongue in cheek, idea.)

FYI... Comic Vine rarely adds duplicate characters/teams or issues. Almost never.

All the duplicate characters have been in the Database since launch and are a result of me compiling a database of characters by scraping the internets. Yes I said internets.

I'll eventually allow moderators to merge dupes themselves, but its a scary tool that cannot be undone.

I thought it was intartubes, or was it intarwebs. Crap, now I'm all confused.

It's the interverse.

Buckshot says:

"It's the interverse."

It all makes sense now.

"O God, it's full of stars."

Ok the international landmine ban treaty might not have been the best template.

I guess what I was getting at is that the people I mentioned including myself are willing to help get rid of the dupes if we had the power to do it, they'd be gone in no time and I think we can do it responsibly if we follow some standards.

Red L.A.M.P. says:

"FYI... Comic Vine rarely adds duplicate characters/teams or issues. Almost never.

They're no doubt about that, but the fact is that the Database is filled with hundreds of dupe characters and creators, and quite a few dupe issues.

This thread alone should prove our point:

http://www.comicvine.com/message/giant-sized-combine-delete-thread/21111/&c=25&25

Since all the users mentioned in Shatterstar's first post (Shatterstar, asxz, Fesak , and me) seemed to have quite a psychotic fixation on finding dupes, it only seemed right to propose our help in correcting all dupes we spent hours looking for.

We've all shown our good will and application on the delete/combine board, and since the growing and the dev of the Vine is taking all mods a lot of time, we only want them and the users of the Vine to know that we're here, should they want to lift a part of this burden of their shoulders. Our help is proposed in all good faith and only for the benefit of the Vine.

Exactly, were here to help out. A suggestion is to give some of us the ability to merge, and all mergings, except the obvious (Invisible Woman + Sue Storm, etc.) should be discussed on the message board first. Some pages shouldn't be merged, for example:
Post" />http://www.comicvine.com/message/vindicator-and-heather-hudson-combine/35309/&c=9&page=1
Post Edited:2007-05-22 05:07:47

Honestly I've gotten to the point, and I think others are feeling the same, where I'm not even posting the dupes when I run across them or see them getting developed on the recent edits front page because it seems futile. Its not something thats going to bring more traffic to the site but just knocking out a dozen dupes or just the big ones would do a lot for the dupe hunting morale.