New element: Universe

[themadman0980]

Where does this comes from?

The idea is to tag the universe of an issue within the metadata. Each issue would have 0...* universes associated with it (potential for multiple in issues where they leap between universes). The only difficulty I can see with this is validating results for consistency, however I assume usage is outside the scope of this project.

What is the rationale for adding support for this element?

There are so many universes it is difficult to keep track of what is happening where.

It would be nice to be able to filter within reading software by Universe. For example, the ability to filter to show only comics from the Star Wars universe within a library of Marvel comics. This would also help users find similar content set within the same universe (Image Comics Massive-Verse, Marvel's Ultimate Universe, etc).

Is the element already handled by any application or tool?

I have just raised this as a feature request with Metron, however I'm not aware of any software currently using this. https://github.com/bpepple/metron/issues/173

There is potential for some overlap with the Locations tag, however that seems to be more general in nature (and thus unusable for filtering in software).

[gotson]

How is that different from a tag or the book being part of a collection?

[themadman0980]

Is there anything that couldn't be a tag or collection? The main benefit to having a specific element is the same as for any other property (Team, Location, etc) currently listed in the schema.

This is a piece of information that will exist for every issue ever released; it's not an optional tag based on user preference in the traditional sense so much as a useful piece of information about every issue which helps provide context to the contents of the issue. Having a tag titled earth-616 or earth-1610 isn't really going to provide much in the way of clarity for end users. It also allows for way too much ambiguity when it comes to validation or consistent approaches to storing the data IMO.

[lordwelch]

My problem with making a universe tag is that the term is mostly specific to marvel comics. There are lots of different websites that allow categorizing content from different fandoms (for lack of a better word) and none of them have a universe property to sort by. There is also a huge number of comics that don't have an internal concept of universes or alternate realities or anything that would fit this field. In any case I don't believe that it belongs in comicinfo, it's not stated much of anywhere or very well but the intent is to fix the biggest issues with the format and keep it backwards compatible with previous versions not to make it the standard to use also this format is not designed for end-users this format is for existing applications to use. You will get better reception in the https://github.com/anansi-project/rfcs repo where hopefully eventually a new format will eventually be born. You can also look at https://github.com/Metron-Project/metroninfo where metron is testing out it's own metadata format.

Also if we want to make it make sens with DC's multiverse they start using terms like 'omniversal overvoid' and I don't think this standard should be involved with those type of words

The DC Multiverse isn't the only Multiverse; It's a part of an Omniverse filled with other Multiverses, sharing the omniversal overvoid with the Marvel Multiverse, the Wildstorm Multiverse, and others.[61] For a full list of worlds, see Multiverse/List of Universes‎.

[themadman0980]

Is it mostly specific to Marvel though? The reason I actually thought of this was Image Comics recent Massive-Verse, which has several concurrent series in the universe. Looking at Wikipedia, there's actually quite a few Image universes (albeit far less than there are in Marvel or DC). DC Comics also has a pretty extensive list.

Sure, a lot of the indie content probably doesn't have this concept embedded, but there's enough for it to be meaningful IMO. Having different series following a set group of characters with different series names could be nicely organised by Universe (here's a list of some of the big ones). I get your point about tags and collections, I just don't think they're specific enough, and they definitely don't allow for any validation or consistency.

I was a little uncertain whether this fit into comicinfo or RFCS aha. I'm happy to move it over there if it's more well suited?