Abandoned Info Page

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"i'll finish this section when i feel like it" —Megatokyo Cast Page, 2000-2005

For many Web Comic creators, just doing the comic is plenty of work; adding a bunch of additional stuff is more than they're up for. On the other hand, such basics as a cast page and an FAQ are incredibly useful in getting new and returning readers up to speed, as well as helping make complex storylines and Loads and Loads of Characters more manageable.

So, many creators add several informational pages in a burst of productivity, and then fail to ever update them again, simply because they never get around to it; thus, many webcomics have pages that inform you of a character's status as of several storylines ago, or answer questions that have since become entirely moot.

In the end, some cast page is better than no cast page, but an updated cast page is the best of all. Fortunately, sometimes the webcomic itself is updated just as slowly.

Examples of Abandoned Info Page include:

• Megatokyo is one of the kings of this trope, with an info page which has consisted solely of "i'll finish this section when i feel like it" for more than five years. This has turned into a running joke within the fandom. As a result, there's a couple of wikis out there, such as Wikitokyo, which double as unofficial info pages for those who just started reading the comic.
  • Even when the site got a face-lift, the info page was still abandoned, even though Fred says he was going to update it. That was Fall of 2007.
• Some authors avoid this by setting up a Wiki for comic, which takes the load off the author's shoulders, and directs the fandom's creative energies so the Wikipedia isn't quite so full of Fictional Character Biographies. For example, Starslip Crisis or the four Walkyverse comics. Of course, this can fail too—the Walkyverse wiki, for example, gets a lot less detailed dealing with events post-2007, if they're mentioned at all, and as a result of this many newer characters don't even have stub pages.
  • Aside: Wikipedia editors tend to look with disdain on articles for fairly minor webcomics (or even fairly popular ones), which results in them getting nominated for deletion, which results in nasty arguments as the fans become insistent (especially if the creators actually encourage it), and ends in never-ending creation-deletion wars. That's why There Is No Such Thing as Notability in TV Tropes.
• Dominic Deegan, Oracle For Hire takes the cheater's way out - its "Cast" page link goes to its Wikipedia article.
  • However, prior to the website getting a facelift, it actually did have a set of (albeit somewhat outdated) cast pages for most of the major characters.
• The same goes for Brian Clevinger of Eight Bit Theater, whose cast page just says he's trying not to update and that the Wikipedia page is probably better than anything he would make anyway.
  • He "heartily endorses this product or service".
• The Sluggy Freelance "New Viewer's Guide" doesn't give much information at all beyond pointing to "The Sci-Fi Adventure" and "Dimension of Pain" stories as good places for new viewers to jump in if they don't want to start all the way from the beginning. Since both those "jumping on points" occur during Sluggy's first year, however, that still leaves new readers with over 3000 strips to go. Pete pretty much admits that he can't summarize ten years worth of strips in a way that makes sense, so instead he just recommends that people read their way through the series at their own pace.
• The Webcomic Jayden and Crusader has not updated its information page for an entire year, despite the fact a few new characters have been introduced.
  • It can be argued that these new characters have limited impact, and the core characters in the cast page have remained the same
• Lampshaded in this The Order of the Stick comic, which goes to new extremes to Demolish the Fourth Wall.
  • The FAQ page for the site is still horribly outdated, though.
  • Somewhat ironically, the cast page was updated when that comic was put out. Haley is now holding a card that says "I. O. Me One big-ass diamond." And that's the only difference.
• Sore Thumbs never once updated its cast page. Only four characters out of many are listed, and one of the four is very much a minor character by now. The writers have actually joked that updating the cast page now would feel like cheating on it. They finally just deleted it in 2009.
• Antihero for Hire has an info page that hasn't been updated in at least a couple years.
• Compare Khatru's original about page here with the new version on the creator-built website here. What a difference HTML competence makes!
• El Goonish Shive used to have a cast page... of sorts. It was discarded after a renovation, which was probably a good thing, because even until 2008 or 9 it still only had one character on it: Ellen, a character introduced a significant number of storylines after the start of the comic. It was never updated.
  • A fan however, did create a more comprehensive cast page, though at the time of this writing it has fallen behind a few months.
• Believe it or not, this actually happens to official works as well. One example is the comic book Ninja High School which is so chock full of characters, the creators don't bother to explain who they are (they have short explanation for the current characters at the start of their issues. But not for everyone). So you can imagine how confused a newcomer would be when they would come in in the middle of the story. Fellow comic Gold Digger avert this with its annual sourcebooks explaining important character and their roles in the story.
• Erfworld's cast page has only characters from early in the story, not even including main character Parson.
• Girl Genius: "The Story So Far." The rest of the info pages are kept up-to-date, though, including separate cast lists for each book (with updated descriptions for even pointless one-shot characters).
• MS Paint Adventures' New Reader page is quite out of date, and claims that Problem Sleuth is 'by far the longest adventure'. As of October 2011, Homestuck is at least twice as long as Problem Sleuth, and almost certainly closer to three times as long.
• Femmegasm's info page only shows the original two characters (Shelly and June), and in their original designs no less. The cast grew several times after that page was made, and Shelly and June got redesigns before they were Put on a Bus at the start of 2012.