The Crossover Wars Timeline

[Hogan]

This is something I've wanted to share for a while...

Its no secret that there was quite a lot of background planning being done both before and during the wars... not everything went as planned though, but every day there were talks back and forth, plans being made, plans changed... plans made to save the plans that didn't work and so on...

One of the major items that was used to try and keep up with the major crazyness that was the Wars, was the Timeline... one giant spreadsheet containing data on all the 50+ participating comics, as well and their update-schedules and how they referred to each other in the various crossovers...

It probably never fully worked as intended for the various participating authors, and it was changed almost dayly to make up for any and all of the changes being made all the time, but it gave an idea of what was taking place, of what we were up against, and how much planning really went into the Wars...

Now, here's for sharing:

[DatabaseError]

That is a monster. Not the largest spreadsheet I've ever seen, I've encountered spreadsheets that contained enough data that it really should have been stored in a more robust format - like SQL, but that's still a pretty big mess there.

Judging by your problems, though, it really sounds like custom software would probably be the best course of action. I might have to look into starting some sort of crossover management project; making a set of CMS (drupal or joomla,) plugins to do that would be cool, since you could handle comic hosting, collaboration, and plot/character databases all in the same spot. I'm not much of a PHP coder, but I might have to brush up if people think that would be cool.

[Hogan]

Heh, well, there WAS suggested alternative methods during the cause of the Wars, at least once by Reinder IIRC.
Problem was, nobody really had the time to actually set up something like that, with the wars raging all over and plans being changed at the drop of a hat, so nothing really came out of it.... and the above shown spreadsheat was probably mostly used by yours sincerely to try and keep up with the happenings.
IF there will ever be a CW II again, the participants would most likely have to look into another method, perhaps one of those you mentioned...

[reinder]

Databaseerror: There wouldn't have been any point in writing custom software for it, as we only did this once. And most of us vowed never to do it again.

The mental effort that went into coordinating this was impressive though. A real feather in Hogan's cap!

[littlebeast]

... most of us vowed never to do it again

And some of us vowed TO do it again.

...Actually, maybe that was only me. And even I can see that it needs to be taken a little slower.

[KAMics]

IIRC you were the only one who wanted to do it again immediately.

The others who wanted to do CWII wanted a break of 2-5 years.

But to echo Reinder's comment, yes a real feather in Hogan's cap. Considering the logistical nightmare that coordinating the Wars was, dealing with all those creators, not to mention various things going wrong & having to scramble to keep the story on track... *shakes head* What is it they say about ducks? Calm on the surface, paddling like hell underneath?