User blog:Gilgameshkun/IDW TMNT transcript progress

So far, my effort to create transcripts of IDW TMNT issues is moving along well. The first was Change is Constant, part 1/Transcript, and the most recent was Blood Brothers, part 2/Transcript. I already have ample experience doing this kind of thing at the Mutant Ninja Turtles Gaiden Wiki, so it seemed like the logical step to extend that effort here at Turtlepedia for main TMNT comics.

I type 200 words per minute, but I don't have a consistent pace in my motivation as an editor. I am still a human being, and my effort could come to a screeching indefinite halt for any mortal reason; I'm just doing what I can, as I can, in my spare time, with my spare mental resources. On a good day, if properly motivated and in the proper frame of mind, I can churn out two, three, four transcripts. Or sometimes it's been days inbetween writing even one transcript. It is also my hope that, eventually, I need not be the only user editing transcripts, but that others can become involved as well, though I'm not exactly necessarily currently searching around for other editors to help pick up this slack, especially given that I'm using esoterically-written templates that I myself wrote and I recently blanked Template:qline's documentation after a major design overhaul so that I can someday rewrite it (which I'm not anywhere near doing yet).

Why transcribe comics? Because there are already websites that transcribe the dialogue of television shows, so it's easy to find transcripts of 2003 TV series episodes, 2012 TV series episodes, etc., especially through Google. But it's not such a simple matter to locate transcripts of TMNT comics. And these transcripts are helpful in not only assisting Turtlepedia editors in editing the articles for comics issues themselves and associated story topics, but they make comic text visible to Google and to Turtlepedia's own internal search engine.

The goal of a transcript is not to completely replicate some poor man's copy of an original work&mdash;it's obviously much more preferable to read the actual comic book, or to watch the actual episode, etc. But transcripts are useful in documenting the work and making it cross-referenceable, in the hopes that, even if this material may eventually languish into obscurity, it may always be visible in a search of archives.