committee post: Category Proposal II

[aethel]

Thank you to everyone who gave us feedback on the category proposal from May 21. As suggested by facetofcathy and others, here's a further revision to that proposal:

Instead of deleting the format categories that currently reside under Fandoms by Source Text, we will move them under another parent category we will create called _Fandoms by Canon Type_. The fandom categories will look something like this:




[Image Description: "Fandoms by Source Text" category now encompasses only fandom categories like "Coffee Prince" and "Blake’s 7". The "Fandoms by Source Community" category now has categories for things like “Media Fandom”, “K-Drama”, and "Anime & Manga". These in turn also link to individual fandom categories, e.g. "Media Fandom" leads to "Blake’s 7" and "Harry Potter" while "K-Drama" leads to "Coffee Prince". A third parent category, "Fandoms by Canon Type", contains format subcategories like "Books & Literature" and "Film", which in turn link to the fandom categories under "Fandoms by Source Text".]

"Fandoms by Source Text" includes all fandoms that are focused on a single "text" or set of texts, like Final Fantasy, Jane Austen, or Brokeback Mountain. "Fandoms by Community" lists larger fannish communities that don’t correspond neatly to a single canon text (like Media Fandom, Anime & Manga Fandom, Filk, Vidding, J-pop, etc.).

Here's a graphic depicting the current state of the categories:



[ Image Description: The “Fandoms by Source Text” category, encompassing both medium-based categories like “Film”, “Real People”, and “Gaming”, and individual fandom categories like “Harry Potter” and “World of Warcraft”. The “Fandoms By Source Community” category is unused. ]

Summary of changes:
* Rename "Fandoms by Source Community" to "Fandoms by Community"
* Rename "Fandoms by Source Text" to "Fandoms"?
* Move to "Fandoms by Canon Type": Books & Literature, Film, Games, Radio, Real People, Television, Theater
* Move to "Fandoms by Community": Comics
* Create: Sequential Art & Animation, Anime & Manga

This way, everyone can choose how to browse or search for what they want--people interested in all pages about fandoms which arise out of books (for example) can look under Fandoms by Canon Type, people interested in K-drama can look under Fandoms by Community, and people who want to see everything at once can look under Fandoms by Source Text. And fans can still make more fandom categories as needed, but categories under Fandoms by Canon Type would remain fairly stable.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here are some examples for how wiki pages might be categorized according to the plan.

Category:Fandoms by Source Text
...Category:Harry Potter
......Harry Potter (the page)

Category:Fandoms by Canon Type
...Category:Books & Literature
......Category:Harry Potter
.........Harry Potter (the page)

So the page "Harry Potter" would get the Harry Potter category and no other category. Meanwhile, the Harry Potter category would be cross-linked under "Fandoms by Source Text", "Books & Literature", and potentially "Media Fandom".

And:

Category:Fandoms by Source Text
......Homestuck (the page)

Category:Fandoms by Canon Type
...Category:Sequential Art & Animation
......Homestuck (the page)


The page “Homestuck” would get the Fandoms by Source Text and Sequential Art & Animation categories because there is no “Homestuck” category yet.

And:

Category:Fandoms by Source Text
...Category:Naruto
......Naruto (the page)

Category:Fandoms by Community
...Category:Anime & Manga
......Category:Naruto
.........Naruto (the page)

Category:Fandoms by Canon Type
...Category:Sequential Art & Animation
......Category:Naruto
.........Naruto (the page)

The page “Naruto” would get the Naruto category.

--------------------------------------------------------------

We welcome discussion, comments, and feedback.

Comments

[elf]

* Move to "Fandoms by Canon Type": Books & Literature, Film, Games, Radio, Real People, Television, Theater

Are comic books "Books & Literature?" Potentially add "Graphic novel/comic/manga" category/ies?

Is the SCA a fandom? I could see it as "fandom by community," but it's got a single canon source ("the middle ages") which isn't described well as "Real People."

Where does bandom go? Is there a "canon type: music" category? Or does that all get blended in to "real people?" (I think of them as every bit as separate as movie & tv, but I'm not in either fandom so I don't know if there's more overlap than that.)

I can think of several more canon types that are so small that I believe it's okay that they're not listed (blogs, artwork, sports--which is not a small fandom, but not well-represented in OTW-ish fandoms).

[aethel]

Comic books would be under "Sequential Art & Animation" in this scheme. "Sequential Art & Animation" would cover comic books/graphic novels, web comics, manga, manhua, anime, comic strips, cartoons, etc. If the category is enormous, we can always create subcategories, but the goal is not to use fandom terms, but generic format descriptions.

Bandom goes under Music_RPF. The existing subcategories under Real People -- Music RPF, Sports_RPF, Actor_RPF, and Historical_RPF -- would remain where they are now.

I think the SCA would fit under Fandoms by Community.

[sqbr]

This seems very sensible to me!

[frogspace.livejournal.com]

This... doesn't make that much sense to me.

Sequential Art&Animation would need subcategories For Anime & Manga and Comics because both are big enough to need their own cats. But then there wouldn't be any pages/files left for the SA&A cat! That would go against Fanlore's best practice when it comes to categories. To me it makes more sense to have an Anime & Manga *and* a Comics cat *instead* of a SA&A.

Fandom by Source Community has currently three subcats: Furry, German-Speaking Fandom, and Science Fiction. All of them with several pages and files. None of them part of your structure?

As I've already said, I think Anime & Manga and Comics belong under Fandoms by Canon Type. RPF is Real People Fiction so I don't see what the difference between RPF and Real People is supposed to be. That's not a useful distinction. For what it's worth, I see it as a canon type thing.

Media Fandom is completely useless as a category for anything because everything can be Media Fandom and if it's not now, it could be in the future. Harry & Johnny was media fandom, Eroica was/is media fandom, and even Popslash is media fandom because it follows in that tradition. It's a glossary term and explains so much about our history (multimedia zines anyone?), but it doesn't work as a category that people add to pages and files, which is what categories are for.

J-pop is Real People and K-Drama is Television? Film? So these would be subcategories of the Fandom by canon type cats. The "pages" explaining what J-pop/K-Drama/Mediafandom, etc. is could stay under fandom by community, but that is not the same as creating fandom by community cats and then adding all the respective fandom cats to these categories.

[hl]

But then you would lose the usability of the 'canon type ' classification, no? Animé is not actually of a different canon type or source type than USA comics, or that Argentinian historietas. The same way that a TV show from Argentina is not from a different canon type than a TV show from USA. It's just that the fandoms are separate, and that's why you have the parallel 'Fandoms by Community' scheme, no?

(am a otw volunteer but not part of the wiki committee, commenting here completely unofficially as an interested wiki user)

[frogspace.livejournal.com]

But then you would lose the usability of the 'canon type ' classification, no?

How so? I don't know what Argentinian historietas are and I'm not sure about Animé but Anime (the Japanese one) is definitely a different canon type than comics (also, not all comics are American). But you are right, a TV show from Argentina is no different canon type than a TV show from the USA, if by TV show you mean Live Action TV Series, which is what we usually mean when we say Television. I guess my point is the Animation & Sequential Art cat tries to be too many different things at the same time. If we need to have parent categories like Animation or Sequential Art, I would imagine a Fandom by Canon Type category to look something like this:

Category:Animation
.....Category:Anime
.....Category:Cartoons
Category:Books & Literature
Category:Sequential Art
.....Category:Comics
.....Category:Manga
.....Category:Manhwa
Category:Film
Category:Games
Category:Live Action TV Series
Category:Real People
.....Category:Actor RPF
.....Category:Historical RPF
.....Category:Music RPF
..........Category:American Idol
..........Category:Bandom
..........Category:Duran Duran
..........Category:Eminem
..........Category:J-Pop
..........Category:Popslash
.....Category:Sports RPF
Category:Radio
Category:Theater

[hl]

And again, I posit they're not different sources at all -- I don't see why you would think so. Live Action TV Series are also in different languages in different countries, have different aesthetic and cultural clichés and plot types, probably have genre differences, etc. Manga and comics and manhwa and historietas (which is also a translation of the term manga, and manhwa, and comics) are not substantially different in any other sense that all those. The only difference is a classification one based on fandom culture. What is then the argument to separate comics (which apparently encompasses not USA stuff too. Like what?) and manga?

(sorry, animé is how anime is written in Spanish; I sometimes flub when I write in English. Though you may have supposed they were the same, no? They're not really written substantially different. Are you finding this discussion disagreeable or aggressive? Why the reaction?)

[frogspace.livejournal.com]

Live Action TV Series are also in different languages in different countries, have different aesthetic and cultural clichés and plot types, probably have genre differences, etc.

Which is why they could all have their own subcategories, if there are enough pages of one type.

What is then the argument to separate comics (which apparently encompasses not USA stuff too. Like what?) and manga?

To answer the "like what" question: French comics, Belgian comics, German comics...

The argument for separating comics and manga is that it's a useful distinction (different styles of art, different structure, different tropes, differences in format and presentation, etc.), makes the categories smaller, and helps Fanlore users to find what they are looking for.

Are you finding this discussion disagreeable or aggressive? Why the reaction?

What makes you think that?

[hl]

I thought that was obvious from how I wrote it! It appeared to me that it was a disingenuous question -- but it seems I misread the tone, apologies.

I really don't see german or french or belgian or argentinian or whatever comics as more similar to USA comics than to manga. And though I think the separation makes sense in some ways (for example, it will be cool to be able to browse separately when one would wants to look, say, only manga pages, because the fandoms are separated communities and thus it makes sense people would want to browse that way), I would still like it better if there were also way to browse all the pages about the same types of canon, including sequential art (I would browse that way, for example, the same way I would browse all Book fandoms).

[frogspace.livejournal.com]

Sorry, didn't get a comment notification.

I really don't see german or french or belgian or argentinian or whatever comics as more similar to USA comics than to manga.

Except someone looking for them (speaking for German/French/Belgian comics) would look for comics, not for manga, because they are commonly called comics. (The German word for comics is Comics and for manga is Manga. Just saying!)

I would still like it better if there were also way to browse all the pages about the same types of canon

There is no technical reason why there can't be both, you can add as many categories to a page as you want, and in some cases Fanlore does include everything in the parent category and in the more specific category at the same time. However, the only example I can think of is the fanworks category which has 9,301 members - not something that is a great way to browse fanworks (but helpful when adding date cats to all these thousand of pages and images). Generally the rules say that this is not the way categories are supposed to work, but that's simply a matter of policy.

I just want to point out that our definitions of "same type of canon" are not the same. Moving pictures are not the same type of canon to me as something where I have to turn a page to see what happens next. It would make just as much sense to me to group everything printed on paper (Manga/Comics/Books) in one category and all moving pictures (Anime/Live Action TV/Film/Cartoons) in another. I would still say these categories are too big, unwieldy and try to be too many things at the same time.

[aethel]

We wouldn't make an Anime & Manga subcategory under Sequential Art&Animation, because as others have pointed out, it's a fandom, and as a fandom category it would be used differently from a format category. If we put Anime & Manga under Fandoms by Canon Type, it would be confusing to readers because the contents of the category wouldn't match the contents of, say, Books & Literature. (An alternative would be to not list every major canon format under Fandoms by Canon Type, but only to list the types, like RPF and Books & Literature, where there might not be an all-encompassing umbrella fan community and/or people just want to have a list.)

The current subcategories under Fandoms by Community would stay where they are.

I don't see the difference between RPF and Real People either. No one is required to create an RPF category for the plan to work.

"Comics" is a problematic category; technically, it describes a format, but I've seen it used to refer only to DC/Marvel fandom.

I am not actually sure what you are describing in the last paragraph. As I understand it, J-pop is a fandom; therefore, a J-pop category could be created that could be sorted under "Music RPF" or "Real People" and under "Fandoms by Community". The pages in the J-pop category would include Jpop.

[elf]

"Comics" is a problematic category; technically, it describes a format, but I've seen it used to refer only to DC/Marvel fandom.

Biggest comics fandom I can think of outside of those is Elfquest. There are also small indie-comic fandoms like Cerebus and Flaming Carrot. And if Chick Tracts have a fandom, I suppose it counts as comics fandom. (There are parody tracts.)

[liviapenn]

Also, webcomics.

[msilverstar]

I think there needs to be a Film category on the same level as Television, or it doesn't make any sense.

Most RPF fits into Media Fandom, but that doesn't work very well for historical real people, or politicians.


That said, I'm not sure whether additional hierarchical categorization is really a good idea here. There are so many ways to think about pages. Tagging might be a better way to go.

[aethel]

There is and will be a film category. I didn't include everything in the diagram, but it should be listed under summary of changes.

[meg_r]

You're obviously not going to please everyone, but I think this is a very sensible approach which makes it possible to browse the wiki in several different ways.

[zebra_in_dream]

Why is Sequential Art and Animation a canon type? Wouldn't the former generally fall under Literature (omit books, comics can be books, too) and the later either go under Television, Film or the not covered Direct-to-Video, Webisodes, Pictures etc.
So Naruto would fall under Literature, Film, Television, Video Games, Card Games and a bunch of other stuff.

And is that even canon type? I'd have expected something like Drama, Science Fiction, Fantasy as canon type, or Universally Accepted Canon, Superseded Canon, Contested Canon, Convoluted Canon and similar things.

[aethel]

With "canon type", we were trying to describe the media format of the canon rather than its literary genre, except that RPF isn't really a media format, so we couldn't call it that. (I guess we could call it "Fandoms by Canon Format" instead. I don't know if that is clearer.)

Technically, yes, graphic novels are books and animation can be TV or film, but these titles would quickly overwhelm the categories and make them less useful for people looking for book fandoms or live-action tv fandoms. Basically, I don't there is a perfect solution.

[zebra_in_dream]

So you are introducing a crutch term so you can include RPF under media type; using a term hardly known outside of academics to categorize in one category a bunch of very different media types, but are keeping books (does this include artbooks, travelbooks, biographies, etc?) and film (on AO3 that excludes Anime (now to be found included under Sequential Art & Animation in your scheme), but includes Cartoons (now to be found included under Sequential Art & Animation)) as crutches so people don't get confused were to find their stuff.

Are people suddenly supposed to know that Sequential Art means comics and manga and that they apparently need to be kept apart from books and literature (to me that reeks a bit as if comics and manga were lesser than literature).

And where is the cut, when is a book a Book and not a comic or picture book? How much or little animation must be in a movie to consider it as a film? When is a film a film (shown in cinema - of what size, shown only as one single unit, only having x number of parts)? Will they than be dual stuffed under both categories?

And why aren't books part of the potential Media Fandom category? Aren't books media, too?

It seems to me that the whole thing is done rather half-heartedly and one-sided.

a few thoughts, in no particular order

[aethel]

Books are a part of media fandom; in the example diagram, the media fandom category points to Harry Potter as well as Blake's 7.

If editors agree, we can cross-categorized animated films under Films and animated tv series under Television. But the tv category is so big already that it may not make sense to change it. I would like to hear from other editors before making such a change.

One thing to keep in mind is that Fanlore is not the AO3. Someone can post a story based on a YouTube video to AO3 and then that youtube video is listed as a fandom. Which is great! But a lot of those fandoms simply won't get written up for Fanlore unless there's enough fannish activity going on and/or a fan is moved to start a wiki article about it. So the overall number of fandoms and number of canon media formats represented on Fanlore will always be smaller than on AO3. Which I don't say to ignore unusual formats and edge cases, but we don't usually create a category until there's some minimum number of pages (10-15ish) that fit into it. If you can give specific examples of fandoms that will be left out in the cold with this plan, it will be easier for us to address your concerns.

Re: a few thoughts, in no particular order

[zebra_in_dream]

My concern is that this is just the forerunner to test the water after which this half-baked scheme will be applied to AO3.
Sequential Art (under which I wouldn't have searched for comics from any country) and Animation thrown into one pot, but Books & Literature and TV Shows and films separate, despite them being at least a combination like Sequential Art and Animation. Added to that that certain Animations are TV Shows and others are Films, and certain Sequential Arts are Books and/or Literature.
You say that you don't want to place certain categories under certain other categories because they'd contain too many entries, but like this there'd be many doubles in many categories (Will Shrek be Animation or Film or both?)

This looks very much like sorting the pears (Anime) into a scheme with the apples (TV Shows) and throwing a gardenia (RPF) in for good measure.

The categories currently look very much like the system ffn has been using for ages. If you want to shake that up and introduce a new way to categorize fandoms, do it completely and consistently. Don't make it looks like Barefoot Gen isn't Literature, My Neighbor Totoro isn't a Film and The Simpsons isn't a TV Show.

[kylara]

I like this generally, and I feel that I understand it enough to use it. But I share some of the concerns expressed in above comments for some of the details, and have some new ones.

- "Sequential Art & Animation" should be separated. They are distinct concepts/mediums, to me they're even more distinct than live-action TV and Film are to each other, and they would be more useful separated.

- Under "Sequential Art" have the "Manga" subcategory, and under "Animation" have the "Anime" subcategory.

- From the way it's being used as a fandom community, it sounds as though "Comics" fandom should be "Comic Books" instead. Then it's not confused with webcomics and others. But that might come into conflict with a possible "comic books" subcategory for "Sequential Art", which leads to the next point.

- Perhaps the potentially-confusing fandom community categories should be named with "fandom" attached to make them distinct from canon types, such as "Comic Book fandom", "Anime & Manga fandom", "K-Drama fandom", etc.

- Real People: I feel this could become a source of confusion with the alternative categories for real people who aren't generally considered canon types, e.g. fans, academics such as Henry Jenkins and Susan Napier, and fandom villains like Ogi Ogas. I'm not sure what to suggest, but maybe "Celebrities" or "Celebrities & Real People", to keep it distinct from academics and others?

- "Television" -> "Live Action Television", and "Films" -> "Live Action Films". I understand why you'd want to exclude animation from the already-large TV and Film categories, but it's also annoying that animated (and anime) shows/films are shoved off with the implication they're somehow not worthy because they're animated. This touches on a sore spot for fans of anime and cartoons. By defining TV and Films as live action, that's no longer such a problem or a source of confusion.

- Instead of listing the whole fandom category (e.g. [[Category: Harry Potter]]) under canon types, how about just list the fandom page (e.g. [[Harry Potter]] the page)? If I'm browsing under "Books & Literature" and come across Harry Potter, I don't want to go through the whole Harry Potter category to find and click on the Harry Potter page. The entire Harry Potter category isn't a canon type, so it seems misplaced in there. Then "Books & Literature" (and other canon sources) remains a list of just that.

So instead of this:
Category:Fandoms by Canon Type
...Category:Books & Literature
......Category:Harry Potter
.........Harry Potter (the page)

It's this:
Category:Fandoms by Canon Type
...Category:Books & Literature
......Harry Potter (the page)

Then the Harry Potter page gets both the categories of "Books & Literature" as well as "Harry Potter".

And with this idea combined with the first/second one, instead of this:

Category:Fandoms by Canon Type
...Category:Sequential Art & Animation
......Category:Naruto
.........Naruto (the page)

It's these:

Category:Fandoms by Canon Type
...Category:Sequential Art
......Category:Manga
.........Naruto (the page)

Category:Fandoms by Canon Type
...Category:Animation
......Category:Anime
.........Naruto (the page)

The Naruto page gets [[Category:Naruto]], [[Category:Anime]], and [[Category:Manga]].

This only applies to categories of canon type. For categories by fandom community, keep the [[Category:Naruto]] under [[Cateogry:Anime & Manga fandom]].

So yes, my thoughts, there they are.

[lian]

- "Sequential Art & Animation" should be separated. They are distinct concepts/mediums, to me they're even more distinct than live-action TV and Film are to each other, and they would be more useful separated.


You know, I think you're right -- I just realized we're falling into the trap of thinking of fandom (like, Anime & Manga fandom which spans canon types) when the category in question is about canon/media type, instead.

ETA: ppl have totally used Ogi Ogas as canon, though -- I recall at least one tentacle rape fic. :> ...but yeah, in general, I take your point, just pointing out the categories are rather...permeable. (good thing there's multicategorizing!)

[kylara]

Thank you, although I think what's going on is a bit different. From my position, it looks like non-animation/comics/etc.-fans aren't used to thinking about animated and drawn mediums, so the categories end up lumped together out of ignorance (or a "they're all the same" mentality). These media are also being removed from equally relevant categories (e.g. TV, film, books & lit) as though the live-action common to media fandom is the not-needing-to-be-stated definition, the non-differentiated norm, so everything else is other and excluded.

For clarification, I recognize the usefulness of putting animated films and shows under a separate animation category, and in the interest of keeping the categories useful I support it. But this permeating idea that TV and films are inherently live-action and their categories require no special definition to justify removing animation is a bit frustrating. It's part of a pattern of behavior/ideas/attitudes that keeps excluding my fandoms.

After hearing references above to the AO3, I went and checked out the categories there. I see that "Cartoons" are inexplicably combined with "Comics & Graphic Novels" over there. Without the reasons for that I can only guess why, but it looks like another case of outsider-not-seeing-differences in the OTW. That's in addition to the term used being "Cartoons" instead of "Animation", which is another annoyance.

Sorry, I've spilled my tl;dr thoughts all over you. Here, have a towel.

ppl have totally used Ogi Ogas as canon, though -- I recall at least one tentacle rape fic

I totally read that fic too. :) There was also at least one manip/fanart and some filk, but I still wouldn't think of him as a canon type. I don't expect the categories to be perfect either, just generally useful and not working under the same thought processes that have caused so many problems of inclusion up to now.

[aethel]

Hi! Sorry about the delayed response. I like most of these changes and forwarded them to the committee--so far no objections. There are a couple of items I'm ambivalent about:
1.
> - Under "Sequential Art" have the "Manga" subcategory, and under "Animation" have the "Anime" subcategory.

Given your plan to categorize fandom pages instead of fandom categories under Canon Types, this would actually be very easy to implement since we've already got the Anime and Manga categories. However, I think it will look a little weird if they are the only subcategories. Can we add other country/region/continent subcategories? Like, do we want a "U.S. Comics & Graphic Novels" category? Admittedly, there's only 27 pages in the current Comics category, and some of them are not actually fandoms. http://fanlore.org/wiki/Category:Comics

Doro also proposed something upthread that appeals to me--have overlapping categories so everyone can have the categories they find useful. All sequential art goes in "Sequential Art", all comics from Japan go in Manga, etc. (If we did this, we would definitely need a U.S. Comics category as well) I made a little diagram of the result:



Existing categories in white, new categories in pink, renamed Real People category in light pink.

2.
I'm also not sure about the naming of the comics fandom category. Do comics fans call it "Comic Book Fandom"? "Comics Fandom", "Comic Book Fandom", a disambiguation along the lines of "Comics Fandom (U.S.?? comic books)" or whatever is fine by me as long as comics fans actually call it that.

3. There is no 3.

(BTW, I changed the "Science Fiction" category to read "Science Fiction Fandom"... and then I realized maybe it should be called "Science Fiction & Fantasy Fandom"??)

ETA: To clarify, if we adopt all your changes and start doing stuff on the actual wiki today, I would be delighted! (I don't think we can do it today, though; I have to go check....) I think point #1 above would be easy to fix later on.

[kylara]

Can we add other country/region/continent subcategories? Like, do we want a "U.S. Comics & Graphic Novels" category?

That sounds fantastic. I was under the impression we'd have subcategories when any group/set/selection gets big enough, which is how I thought categories were working anyway? And optimistically we'll have many anime and manga entries, so we still have use for those categories.

For these "overlapping" categories, just so I understand: canon type and fandom community wouldn't be separated anymore? I'll read through Doro's thread more thoroughly tomorrow, but I'd like to have a better idea how this would work. Just looking at the diagram, it seems redundant for anime and manga (and potentially other sub-categories) to be listed twice, as both top level and sub-categories.


Do comics fans call it "Comic Book Fandom"?

Good question; I personally don't really know! And I don't want to inflict titles on others. It looked to me like a descriptive term rather than an identity, which is why I suggested it, but I should've checked on that before saying anything. According to Google, "comics fandom" has 64,400 results; "comic book fandom" has 114,000 results. There is also apparently a "Father of Comic Book Fandom" Jerry Bails, so it seems the term has been in use for a while. All I know is what Google tells me.


3. There is no 3.

You can't fool me! Where has the cabal hidden it?! ;)


maybe it should be called "Science Fiction & Fantasy Fandom"??

That sounds good to me, but as with comic book fandom I'm not sure if that's intended as a description or an identity. Maybe ask the community?

At this point, I think the category proposal is ready to be implemented? Details can be tweaked along the way of course. Although I'm still not sure about the overlapping category suggestion; will re-read at normal hours, it might compute then.