Contribute to the UXN: Page 3 of 3

TV & Movie Summaries

Just like with our Issue Summaries, the UXN has maintained a strict neutral opinion voice - ergo no reviews. As a result, the UXN staff has been writing summaries - prose adaptations of the motion picture. Also like the summaries, we are very specific in what a summary should be. For instance, a summary should follow the following format.

1) It should be in a present but non-progressive tense, with a 3rd person omniscient voice. The first basically means that you are describing what is happening as it happens, rather than explaining what happened in the past. The 3rd person is the manner in which most fiction is written.

2) The prose should be interesting and exciting, almost as entertaining as the source material. It should never be dry or boring.

3) The detail of the summary can vary with the summarizer. However, the ultimate goal should be that a reader - who has not seen the source motion picture - should be able to follow the summary and understand what happened, being able to more or less hold their own in a conversation about the motion picture.

While it is not the goal of the UXN to replace seeing the show or film - far from it - we wish for our site to be a source where people can read summaries to films/TV Shows that they cannot find or maybe even afford. Also, it can be a quick reference for those needing to quickly figure out "now when did that happen?" without searching through episode after episode to figure it out.

How to become a summarizer:
Becoming a summarizer is not difficult. Assuming that you are up to the task of writing a summary detailing the action and dialogue of a 30 minute and up to 2 hour motion picture, making it informative and entertaining at the same time, all you have to do is ask.

What can you summarize:
Basically, as it states above, anything X-Related can be summarized. Right now both the X-Movies and all of X-Men Evolution have been summarized, but there are still numerous summaries still needed for Spider-man and His Amazing Friends as well as X-Men the Animated Series. Other Marvel produced motion pictures will be considered on a case by case basis.

X-Universe and Merging Minds

The entries in our atlas, timeline and alien races sections all follow the same basic structuring. The audience can expect the First appearance to be mentioned, a visual description of the aliens or the place or some sort of Introduction to the timeline, important Characters connected to the race/place or timeline will be featured and the issues in which they appeared will be summarized in chronological Order. Depending on what the topic will be, a few extra categories can make it into the article as well. If it’s a really big timeline, a place featured quite often or an alien race with rather much history, the entry will be divided into several subpages, to allow for better navigation. Otherwise all the sections described above will appear in one page. Just check into one of the three sections to get an idea how these entries are handled. Needless to say, before you start working on a new topic, or update an older one, drop us a mail to discuss the topic with us first.

Now, any remaining articles that aren’t covered in some of the other sections, they are rather likely to become part of our Merging Minds section. And, as diverse as the topics and articles in that sections are, so are their basic structures and guidelines needed to work on any of them. It would be too much to describe each and any of them here, which is why we won’t do it. Basically, there’re two ways to contribute here. Duties could be assisting with updates for what’s already there or scribing a whole new one.

If you have an idea for a whole new article, be prepared to explain your idea in detail – as well as providing an outline for you want to do. Some ideas might not fit with our site, so it is possible that an idea might be turned down. Just as well, many early staff members find it takes a little while to adapt to the tone and voice we use in our articles, and rewrites are many times asked for this – as well as for the all-important accuracy and thoroughness. You should know your subject matter very well, before trying to write something to educate others. Likewise, if you “only” wish to update the existing articles, we are looking for someone who will work in this section on a regular basis, and not just the one or two articles that they favor.

Cover Gallery

Naturally, when it comes to providing images for the site, you need to have access to a scanner to scan images from the comic books. We don't accept pictures that you have downloaded from some other website. Any image submissions need to be in .jpg format, and please never send too many images at once, to avoid clogging his e-mail inbox.

A person that submits to the Cover Gallery must have more than just a passing knowledge of an art program and a scanner. Realize that our site is trying to give the fans 100% quality in everything we do. Whether you would like to be a contributor that looks through our database of images and helps by providing better quality images than the ones already in place or if your a person that would like to contribute past or present cover scans, UXN has a place for you.

Cover Scan Requirements:

• For each cover in two versions a thumbnail and a big one.
• The thumbnail is supposed to be 65 pixels wide and 100 pixels high (standard size), the big one is 600 high and 400-something wide (the number behind 400 varies between 00 and 30, depending on the proportions of the frame you cut out of the cover scan.
• Please make sure that it's just the cover image, no border around it.
• Make sure to save the big versions at 85% quality, and the thumbnails at 95%.
• Naturally, if it's a wrap-around cover, of course the sizes are 100(h) x 130(w) pixels and 600(h) x 800(w)-something.
• Contact us first! don't blindly send images.
• Make 100% sure that the site does not already have the image scanned and in its database.
• Make sure the issue contains an X-Character's appearance, if you have any questions please email us first before possibly wasting your time
• Email the image as an attachment, not as an embedded image!

Team Entries

Firstly, Dependant on how many stories a team has appeared in or whether they are considered an X-Men related team ,it needs to be worked out whether the teams really qualify for such an entry. Contacting us will help clear that up.

Secondly, In regards to the structure of the actual article, note the appearances should appear in chronological order, the narration being interrupted at certain points to allow for some relevant side-information, for example to detail what happened to certain members after they left the team).

Finally, you'll notice that the team articles layout uses a cominbation of tables defined in the web page. If you know HTML thats great, however we can help you with this, during the review phase.