Q12: Ask a question or make a suggestion!
Each time we run the survey, we always have at least one question where we let you tell us or ask us anything you like. Having finally released a Wolverine spotlight since we last run, the survery had a little bit of an effect on the responses. As always we couldn't list all the response, so we picked out a few based on commonality or interesting questions.
Update older entries...
Wut asked "So... how about that Cyclops spotlight update?"
David Erk asked "Can you please do an update on Rachel Summers, Colossus or a new Spotlight on Pixie, Hope Summers, Kid Omega, Krakoa or Blindfold?"
Will Salmon asked "After the Secret Wars Saga, will you update Wolverine's and the rest of the X-men profiles that haven't been updated in 5 to 10 years?"
Kay asked "I would love to see an update on the Rogue spotlight"
Kobus Pienaar asked "I would really appreciate an update on rogue and moonstar's profiles"
William Wagoner said "You guys do an amazing job and I really like the Publication History X section. My only suggestion that I can think of is that if you get around to updating the original 5 X-men spotlights, maybe create an article specifically to address the time displaced O5."
With over 220(!) indepth character spotlight, profiles or Bring on the Bad Guy articles, keeping them up to date as well as working on newer ones is a challenge and we do have some bigger characters that are extremely out of date. This is something that we are aware of and working at fixing. As a side note, we had been delaying work on the original 5 X-Men due to the younger versions being brought into the future until we had some clarification on the overal plan for these characters. Given the characters will still be around post the Secret Wars storyline, you may very well take another look at those characters.
Please add a spotlight for...
C-Los said "Eva Bell aka Tempus needs a Spotlight (shes my new favorite X-Woman from the new kids"
Steven Sharofsky asked "DO A TOAD SPOTLIGHT"
Adam M. asked "PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Do a Feral spotlight. PLEASE!!!"
Theresa S. said "more spotlights!"
Blair said "All of your hard work is appreciated. If you need an idea for a smaller spotlight for x-characters, I would suggest Lockheed and Moira MacTaggert."
Alix said "spend a year just adding and updating spotlights."
Kylie Vance asked "I've been a fan of this site for over ten years. (I feel old) I have waited patiently for a Toad Spotlight. He is one of my all time favorite characters. I'll keep waiting and keep coming to this site no matter what. Someday I do hope that I'll see a Toad Spotlight. (Lesser extent a Sabretooth one) However, I know you all are quite busy and I wish you the best with this website."
Jim Rich said "You need to do a spotlight for squid boy. He maybe not well known but his story is great"
We will eventually get around to having detailed entries for every X-Character. We try to keep a fine balance between updating older entries and beinging you new ones, so one day you will see that Toad entry maybe in another 10 years :D.
New & Updated Articles...
Tom Trbuza said "please bring back where are they now. I have no idea where most x characters are now"
sergiogf said "Writers and artists articles! Critical analysis.."
Jamie Lucas said "I like things like secrets behind the x-men"
Michael Bates asked "There's been a lot of profiles and stuff lately. I love the interesting articles, like the Relationship Maps or the X-Mark the Spot or Alien Races. Could we see more of that stuff?"
Carl Termini asked "Is there any chance that the site would be doing interviews with creators again? Also, would the site be adding to the Secrets of the X-Men section (there's been new writers since Claremont's X-Treme X-Men)."
Justin said "Maybe an update/expansion of danglers and unsolved mysteries/plotlines? Especially if a lot gets lost with the recent Secret Wars storyline it may be interesting to see storylines that never were or were heading in a certain direction."
Lundy said "I'd be interested in a section regarding mutants who never were on an X-related team or even appeared in X-related books."
Jon Galgan said "please keep updating the crossover section. I use it all the time."
Marvin said "I LOVE EVERYTHING about this site, however, I do feel like this site is missing a greatest battles type of page/article."
Michael Jodha said "Suggestion: More Frequent Merging Minds/In-depth analysis articles. Since you guys are pretty much experts on the franchise (probably more so than Marvel itself), I believe readers give your opinions a lot of weight considering how in-depth you've examined each character, team and event. So keep those articles coming - they give great perspective."
Caleb Wimmer said "Just keep the awesome articles and spotlights coming :D"
For many years, nearly all the feedback we recieved was related new or updating our Spotlights, so it's really nice to get interest in other types of articles.
Suggestions to improve things...
Ryan B said "The articles could use some more images to break up the seemingly endless paragraphs of text. I read it all, but some images would break up the monotony, let alone giving more context to the articles I'm reading." -I suspect this is in regard to older articles as opposed to newer ones, as we try to make sure there are suitable images included.
Kevin said "Being stuck with an event month that im not interested in suuuuuuuucks and you lose me right away. Especially random and benign event months. Like 2099 and exiles. Its like im held hostage to a whole month of characters im not interested in. I accept this though cuz I do love you guys tand appreciate the site." - It's something we hadn't thought, but I can understand the sentiment and hopefully with any future events we'll try and make things a bit more diverse.
Lorraine Nolan said "The old comic cover layout was easier to find things. It can be hard to fond the right publication name and the comics are not always in order. Now its quicker to check an issue summary and find cover there." - If we are honest, we agree with you. The original idea was to make it easier to find a specific cover, but it doesn't work as planned and we'll be looking to improve this over the coming months.
Nu-D suggested "I've sad it before but I'll say it again: the updates should be listed on a forum higher on the unstablemolecules index page. I don't often scroll all the way to the bottom, so I miss update announcements. If you're trying to generate traffic from the forums to uxn.net, moving the updates to a more visible spot would help." - Originally we never posted updates to the forum and it was only because people used the forum to provide feedback on an article that they started appearing there. somewhere down the line we started posting each update. I'm not going to say it'll happen but we've a few updates planned for the forum over the coming year.
S stated "I find your forum very excluding and unfriendly." - I'm sorry you found it that way, feel free to get in touch to discuss with us more so we can understand what may have transpired.
Wilberd suggested "Make a news page with the latest news. I know everything come on the Unstablemolecules, but a news page on UXM site is also nice & Add Social media buttons to share pages of UXN"
Rosanne Libretti suggested "It would be neat to see past site update entries (like having next and previous buttons on the front page)." - Both ideas are something that we've thought about and, while I can't guarentee, you may see this being added to the site soon.
Adam Schneider said "I would really like to see your X-Men issue summaries all be more up to date. Especially current or recently completed volumes. I keep track of the stories in a notebook and after a period of not collecting am now making my way back and like to use this site to see what I have missed. But I noticed the other day that the last volume of X-Men Legacy that follows Legion's adventures isn't even on here and X-Men volume 4 or series 4 ends with issue 16 instead of going all the way to 26. Even Uncanny X-Men volume 3 was missing some issues. Since this site is devoted to X-Men it would be nice to see the issues of these main titles be up to date more." - We have a crack team of issue summarisers around here but with Marvel's output so high it can be difficult to keep up.
Kenny Norman suggested "Correct some of the older detailed issue summaries to make them ACTUALLY detailed. The older summaries are only a few paragraphs long." - We do actually have an internal list of issue summaries that need to be rewritten (mainly mine! - Dean) and eventually they'll be updated.
A.J. said "Would love to see info about the animated versions of characters included in the alternate reality sections of the character summaries. Lot of great variations of the x-men in the cartoons and in books inspired by the cartoons."
Jermaine Coolidge said "How about adding sections to Spotlights and Profiles that tells us where else outside comics those characters appear? Like movies, tv shows, games etc. I'd love to know where else we can find characters from comics."
- The topic of non comic related content on character spotlights is something that's been discused many times in our site history and, for the moment, we have decided to only include comic related content and that this information belongs with the outside the comics sections for TV shows, movies & Games.
The "no group" reponses...
Justin Calais asked "Also what happen to the fan creator section? Like the short stories and original characters?" - The fan created section moved onto our sister site uncanon.com a few years ago.
Mark asked "I liked the concept of an interactive collaboration that occured when the 'Gene Game' was on the site. Would UXN consider bringing something like that back again?" - Around the time we spun out the fan created content into its own site, we did discuss about a Gene Game II, but at the time didn't feel it would work. That said, if someone was interested in looking to do that again, I'm sure it's something that we would be more than happy to do on uncanon.com. I'd recomend starting a discussion on our forum.
Paul said "I noticed that when you asked the question 'How do you here about our updates? ' you have the wrong wording. It should be hear rather than here." erm... yes.. have a UXN No Prize!
"Also I am disappointed that none of the Cataclysm comics have been summarized since the X-Men had their own Limited Series in that storyline and Kitty Pryde had a big role in the main story. When I say big I mean in both senses of the word." - I'm not sure why, but we don't have many contributors that read the ultiamte line of comics, but hopefully we'll eventually resolve that. Of course, we are always happy for people to help write these up :)
Lisa Miller asked "Will we be seeing Kitty Pryde mature a little more (in appearance and demeanor) and start going by "Kate" rather than "Kitty" soon? Sure would love to see her gradually grow into the Kate Pryde we've seen from the "future"!" - Your guess is as good as mine, but who knows now that she'll be joining the Guardians of the Galaxy after the Secret Wars event.
and finally... Gratious Love
Tom said "I honestly can't think of anything you all could possibly do to make this site better. THANK YOU SO MUCH on behalf of X-Men and comic book fans everywhere!!"
C-Los said "Love the website, avid spotlight fan. I like to read the characters histories from the spotlights, brings back memories of the comics and characters ive read for many years. "
Derek Wilson said "None! Just wanted to say thank you for all your hard work! Love this site!"
Kid Apollo said "I stumbled upon this site when i was 13 years old, id watched the cartoon, read a few books and owned a few action figures. my uncle let me read a copy of Giant Sized X-men #1 when i was 8. from that moment on comics and the X-men in particular became a drug, whose habit i cant kick. this site has been the best resource ive found to learn about everything X-men. im now 26 years old, so this site has been a part of my life for almost half of it. if i could make a suggestion i'd simply say 'keep doing what youre doing', the work is great, the spotlights are incredible and my fave part of the site. keep up the hard work and thank you for being here "
Temudschin said "Just wanted you to know that UXN was one of the first websites I visited and it switched my opinion on the internet from "Who would need that?" to "Why didn't I discover this earlier?". So...thanks for my online addiction? ;) Keep up the good work!"
Alex said "Just wanted to say thank you all so much for your hard work on the site! I've appreciated it for almost a decade now."
Brent said "This site is amazing; you all do a fantastic job!"
Arthur said "You guys are great, and I love your site. Thank you so much."
Ronny Fraser said "I stopped collecting X-men comics about 5 years ago due to cost and space limitations. This site is my sole source for staying current on what's happening. You do a great job. Thank you for your hard work!"
John Taylor said "One pet peeve of mine was how the urls weren't better for the site, but that was just recently updated so ya'll are doing great!! "
Hector Castellanos said "I have enjoyed your site since your first year. Please keep up the great work. "
Sarah said "This website is fantastic! The issue summaries are great, and, for a fan who had been gone for a while, it was instrumental in helping me catch up. So thank you. I only wish this site (and the Internet, in general) was around back when I first started collecting comics."
Michael Mahoney quoted "As said by Billy Joel, "I love you just the way you are." "
Q13: How old are you?
Given that we have been around for over 15 years now, it's not suprising that our visitors are aging along with us. The largest group, those between 25-34 has stayed roughly the same, whereas our 35-50 & 50 plus age groups increased and the 16-24 group reduced.
Q14: Where are you from?
We did modify the where are you from this year to be country specific rather than by regions around the world. Not surprisingly, as an English language site, the majority of our visitors come from countries where that is the first language.
It should be noted that Canada made a big mark on the visitor base this year, but that might be because it was the first time we included our Canadian friends after accidentally missing them out in previous surveys
Q15: For those from the US, Which State?
A new question, just for our American visitors was to find out which state they were from.
Q16: Interested in helping out on the site?
Our last question was geared to seeing if more of you would be interested in helping out on the site. We didn't actually expect to get many to reply in the affirmative, but getting just under a quarter of visitors say they are interested was fantastic.
We've been slowly sending out mails to those that did, to work out how you can get involved. Hopefully, the rest of your will be seeing the fruits of their labor soon.
Even though we asked the question as part of the survey, we are always looking for more people to help out on the site. If you are interested in helping out, get in touch. We look forward to you being involved.
Thanks again for all those that submitted your feedback. We'll see you in another 3 years!