Artistic traits are certainly a component of what to look for in spotting, but they're just puzzle pieces. The way an artist draws noses, ears, hands and eyes can all be tells, but then there is also figure drawing, panel layout, and other spotters may have other things they consider. It can be a fun skill to learn, and, I think, an important one. It's also challenging.
There are good resources out there already Who's Who is the best reference, but it isn't issue specific, has omissions, and sometimes some errors. Still, it's the first place I look. The GCD is also good to check as a guide, but is rife with inaccuracies. It's been improving in recent years as access to this material has gotten easier, but there is still much to do. Some sort of wiki-site, or editable artist files on this site or CB+ would go a long way toward educating/training would be spotters.
The way I see each page/file, there would be confirmed samples of a person's work from various points in their career (either signed work, or confirmed by a knowledgeable party who would take credit [or blame!] for the attribution), and then "suspected" samples submitted by other spotters/spotters-in-training. These would be noted as unconfirmed samples to either be confirmed, denied, or left as a "possible" credit later on. Using DCM's site architecture, this is how I'd structure it:
1) Home Page level: Artist Category
2) 1st Category level: Artists broken down by name, i.e. A-C, D-F, etc. However it would be decided best to break them down. I have an excel sheet of Who's Who data with nothing but credits from 1959 on back. Lists of names could be pulled from that to at least give every artist a skeleton section. It would also be useful to have a "shops" with just a listing of who is known or suspected to have worked in what shop and when. I have a sheet for that as well.
3) 2nd Category level: So an "A-C" category would then be broken down by artist. The A's would start off like this: "A., H."; "A., J. K."; "A., V. P."; "A. A."; "Abby, Harold"; "Abel, Dave"; "Abel, Jack"; etc. This would be akin to our company level pages (i.e. Fawcett Comics)
4) Artist level: So, if we use Jack Abel as an example, his page would have bio information/Who's Who credits at the top, then a listing of samples. This would be akin to the title pages we have for books (i.e. Whiz Comics).
5) Sample level: Within the artist level, people would contribute samples. These could be whole stories for public domain work, or a page, or samples of pages for non-public domain work. These samples should fall under the "fair use" clause as they are for review purposes. This would be akin to our individual issues level. The samples could then be downloaded, previewed online, and commented on, just like any fill book or archive on this site. Information needed for samples would include the year of the sample, the book it came from, whether it is confirmed/signed or unconfirmed, and who the spotter was.
Setting up such a section would be the largest effort for site admins; creating listings for each artist, copying bio/credit data, but after that, the project would be like everything else on DCM or CB+, user created/supported.
-Eric
