Thread:The S/@comment-27634847-20160206012936/@comment-995426-20160208173531

Well, the TMNT multiverse is a lot more complicated than that. There are as many as a dozen or more separate continuities. I wouldn't necessarily have different species categories for all of them (rats, etc.), but a timeline specific to a single continuity does create a legitimate interest to categorize according to meaningful distinctions specific to that continuity. It's a practical question: "If I were a user reading one specific continuity, what would I want?" There's also the issue that if you're reading just one continuity, you may be okay with spoilers for one continuity, but not spoilers for every other continuity you might want to pick up at a later date.

In other words, this is a large wiki encompassing multiple interests that often don't intersect well. For example, look at how much attention the 2012 TV series articles get, and look how little attention even the IDW comics articles get. A lot of users who are mainly into one continuity, may not necessarily know what else is out there. But just because they don't know, doesn't mean they don't leave open the possibility to looking into them at a later date. I know that, before I started reading IDW, I wasn't ready to look at it because I was already actively immersed in other continuities, and I didn't want to hear any spoilers about it, and was really irritated to encounter any of them. And since I frequently browse categories, it's rather distressing and counterproductive to find a category as cluttered as the Room of Requirement from Harry Potter.

Also, I think it may be very naive to hope for Nickelodeon to give you any official information by request. After all, this is not an official site or an officially affiliated site&mdash;this is effectively a community-run fan site, and especially as an open wiki under a CC-BY-SA license, there's no effective way for Viacom to control how the information they release is officially represented, especially if you're not already under enforceable legal contract with them. If press releases already work, there may not be any reason to do things any other way. Note that creators often approach public Q&A very differently. Some creators are very engaging with their audience and frequently answer questions, and I know Peter Laird occasionally had open Q&A sessions on his blog. And some creators, for whatever reason, decide to let officially published materials and press releases do all their communicating. It may end up being the case that Ciro Nieli is under a certain kind of non-disclosure agreement not to release any information without the express lawyer-analyzed preapproval of Viacom, which necessitates all releases of information having a certain formality to them that isn't easy to misrepresent in the media. Nickelodeon is a very different corporate beast from the relatively independent and informal style of Mirage Studios, and I don't necessarily expect them to be easy for ordinary people to reach, and I don't expect them to release their information except on TV, press releases or the occasional pre-written corporate-approved comic con announcement.