Complex-wiki wikitext mastery (multiverse designations, appearances tracking, Lua/DPL) is a database hand-built to compensate for MediaWiki's lack of entities, relationships, and queries. OLN provides that natively — IF the model supports a continuity/reality dimension, variant identity, and typed/attributed edges. The power-admin adoption play: reframe their role from plumbing to world-modeling.
The insight
What admins built in wikitext on a wiki like Marvel Database — Earth-616/reality designations, appearances tracking, giant infoboxes, Lua modules, DPL queries — is a typed entity-relationship graph with a query layer, hand-built inside a tool that has none of those. The "complexity" is the cost of faking a database in wikitext, not intrinsic to the content. OLN's Fact graph provides it natively.
Use-case → native mapping
| Wikitext construct | Use case | Native in OLN |
|---|---|---|
| Reality/Earth designations, per-reality pages, disambig hubs | model a multiverse | one entity-cluster with continuity-scoped Facts/variants; disambig auto-generated |
| Appearances templates (char↔issue, typed) | a hand-maintained many-to-many | typed, attributed graph edges — record once; both directions are the same queried edge, no double-entry |
| Infoboxes | structured consistent data | Facts / entity attributes (Entry 029 adaptive rendering) |
| Navboxes / succession / "appears with" | derived navigation | derived from edges automatically |
| DPL queries + Lua (queries & performance) | a query engine + perf workaround | native graph queries (Entry 023 storage); Lua/DPL perf cliffs gone |
| Naming conventions + categories | schema by discipline | entity-type schema (G-048) + review queue (G-060) |
What it requires of the data model (the stress test)
Marvel will break a too-simple model. The model must express:
- Continuity/reality dimension on entities and Facts (how does this relate to LoreLines (Entry 010, interpretation) and canon version control (G-012)? Likely a distinct canonical axis, not interpretation).
- Variant identity — is Miles Morales "Spider-Man": same entity, variant, or related? Rules for clustering/relating entities across realities; reboots; "what if" realities.
- Typed, attributed edges — appearance types (featured/minor/mentioned/ flashback/cameo…), per-reality, per-variant; rich edge metadata.
- Cross-reality relationships — crossovers; characters who move between realities.
The power-admin adoption play
- Reframe the role: plumbing → world-model architecture. Their expertise moves to canon modeling/curation — the high-tier contribution / pattern-authoring role (G-059, G-066) — not maintaining templates.
- Their Lua/templates do not port (G-070 hard wall): the data maps natively, the workarounds retire. Message it as "your data comes, your workarounds become unnecessary," never "we kept your modules."
- Expressiveness escape hatch: power users who wrote bespoke Lua need an MDX-component path (G-070) for genuinely-custom views, or they'll feel boxed in by the structured model.
Open decisions
- How continuity/reality is modeled (a dimension on Facts? a branch? relation to Entry 010 / G-012 / G-048).
- Variant-identity / entity-clustering rules across realities.
- Edge-metadata schema richness (appearance types and beyond).
- Scope of the custom-component escape hatch for power users.
- Whether Marvel (or a comparably complex wiki) becomes the explicit design reference case for the data model.
Related
- Entry 002 — canonical entity architecture · Entry 010 — LoreLines · Entry 029 — prose→Facts
- Entry 023 — storage (graph queries) · G-048 — entity-type vocabulary · G-026 — Fact quality
- G-012 — canon version control · G-070 — wikitext interop / MDX escape hatch
- G-030 — migration · G-059 — gamified high-tier contribution · G-066 — pattern authoring · G-060 — review queue