Fanlore's Journal

Fic-Privileging on Fanlore and Limitations to Fannish Diversity

2010-03-20T09:32:13Z

Following a discussion in Talk:Tentaclefic, RatCreature suggested bringing the topic up in the community to raise awareness of the issue and hopefully get some more input on what to do about it. The topic began with the suggestion that the "Tentaclefic" article, which address tentacles in fandom and fanworks more broadly than just fic, be renamed to incorporate other mediums of fanwork. This expanded into a broader discussion on what to do about other such named articles and fic-privileging on Fanlore.

I'm mostly from anime/manga fandom. From the discussion it seems that fic is the core of many Western-sourced fandoms which would explain the fic-centricism on Fanlore. Fic is also important in anime/manga fandom, but quite a lot of activity is also focused on visual mediums such as fanart, webcomics, and manga-style doujinshi. Tropes aren't limited to written fiction, and fic-centered terms are not as prevalent.

I'm concerned that when topics (such as tentacles) have articles with fic-centered instead of inclusive names, that this works at the exclusion of other mediums of fanworks. I would like to see more anime/manga information brought into Fanlore, and so far the inclusion has been rather limited (which could be for a number of reasons besides). Still, I would like to see Fanlore remain welcoming to expansion.

So how about it? Ideas on how to be more mindful to non-fic fanworks? RatCreature's also looking for ideas on how to rename topics like "wingfic," "apocafic," and others which are not inherently fic-centric.

Policy Posted for Comment

2010-03-19T22:34:29Z

We've posted the Fandoms as Category policy change to the policies section of Fanlore. We'd like to open it up for comment. You can find it here.

We, the wiki committee, don't work in a vacuum and would like your input on this. If possible, We'd like to have the discussion here on Dreamwidth. It's easy to answer questions and respond to comments. If discussion becomes unwieldy, we can schedule a chat in the Fanlore chat room.

This is only the first of several policies we're working on and are planning to put out for comment in the next few months. So, let us know what you think.

Help with Login IDs?

2010-03-17T06:22:39Z

Ok, I've spent ~2 hours looking through Help and FAQ pages for this info, and no one's in the chatroom right now, so I guess this is my last stop. Help me, Fanlore geniuses - you're my only hope!

I originally started editing Fanlore using an OpenID account based on my LJ. But since I don't log into my LJ very often anymore, I went ahead and created a regular account. I assumed that after I did so, there would be a way to merge the two.

Silly me.

So now I have a user page and one set of watchlist/contribs under OpenID, and a second set under my new login. Does anyone have any idea how I get myself out of this mess? I would really rather keep the new login, if possible, especially since I've already contributed under it.

Thank you to anyone who has ideas!

Table of Contents and Templates, revisited

2010-03-17T02:07:03Z

It looks like taking the TOC coding out of the templates caused more issues than it fixed, so we've added it back in. We're looking into ways to improve our stylesheets so that we can fix the problems that led us to taking the coding out of the templates in the first place. Thanks for everyone's feedback on this. We'll keep working on it. :)

six degrees of help pages

2010-03-15T01:38:39Z

Point the first:
I created a mashup fandom template the other day for fandoms with multiple source texts selected based on the actors (bandmembers?) they have in common. Today I was tweaking it and looking at talk pages to see what other fandoms the template might be used on when I belatedly realized that I should have called it a "6 degrees" template. There's a 6 Degrees of Canada, 6 Degrees of SGA (still redlinked), and even a 6 Degrees of Pete Wentz. (And Kiefer/Lou.) On the Harrison Ford talk page, someone mentioned they were having trouble finding an appropriate fandom category to tag him with... So, are there enough of these fandoms to justify a "6 degrees" category (or some other term, I don't know what)? In any event, I'd love to see a wiki entry about this kind of fandom if anyone is knowledgeable enough to write one.

Point the second:
After my last post, I started five help pages before I ran out of steam. Check 'em out (and edit them):

http://fanlore.org/wiki/Help:Fanworks
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Help:Pairing_pages
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Help:People_pages
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Help:Glossary
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Help:Character_pages

Along the way I realized no one had added any character or pairing pages for RPF fandoms. Although now I see that isn't entirely true: see Monaboyd. There's a brief discussion here on how to organize RPF character and pairing pages that needs more input from RPF fans.

Sphinx Install Complete

2010-03-14T21:25:26Z

A quick note to let everyone know that the Sphinx search engine has been installed at Fanlore and is ready for use.

If you have any issues send a message to the wiki committee at wiki [at] transformativeworks [dot] org.

Thanks to everyone who helped out with the testing! We appreciate it!

Spinx Install on Sunday

2010-03-11T01:12:49Z

Just wanted to let you all know that Fanlore will be down on Sunday 3/14/2010 from 3:00pm Eastern Standard Time (UTC -5) to 4:00pm EST to install and test the Spinx search engine extension.

The wiki committee will be testing it after the install, basically just running a few searches. If anyone is around and wants to help out, you can join us in the Fanlore chat room at about 3:30 pm EST to run a few searches and make sure that everything works right.

ETA: Time designations

LOTR and the Help pages

2010-03-09T22:14:40Z

Two things I wanted to ask about and/or draw attention to:

1. We've been talking about moving LOTR RPF to a top-level page. The only question is how to represent the name. One vote for LOTRiPS, one for Lotrips. I've seen various capitalizations. But I was only in Lotrips for half a second (or a month?), so I wouldn't listen to me. More votes wanted!

1a. Speaking of which, the LOTR pages, not to mention the Doctor Who pages and the Star Wars pages, need to be reorganized. There's some discussion on the talk pages.

2. I've been looking through (and editing) the Help pages a lot lately. mrsvelvetears has been doing an excellent job of improving the language in the existing pages, but I think we need to add more pages to this namespace to document how we the editors have been handling certain topics in practice. There is a WIP help page already for Fandoms. I'd also like to have separate help pages for Characters, Pairings, Glossary terms and Fandom Glossaries, Fanworks, Lists, ...? These pages could be short or long and could include which template and categories to use, as well as naming conventions (to sub or not to sub), suggested headings and topics, and examples. There are some tips and discussion scattered throughout the wiki about these topics, but nowhere obvious. I'm willing to dive in, but would I be stepping on anybody's toes? Admittedly, it's a bit late in the game to ask, since I've already been editing the Help pages, but I thought I'd check in in case nobody had noticed....

Challenge: Supernatural!

2010-03-05T03:06:54Z

The sad, sad state of the Supernatural page over on Fanlore has already been pointed out, and rightly so! Someone passing through who has, I dunno, lived in cave since 2005, might think this was a fandom for a show people were casually fond of, rather than the massive, incredibly passionate fandom it actually is. And poor Castiel! (I might be a bit single-minded here. *g*) He has no pairing subpages. And I know Misha Collins has a huge following. Spread the word! Let's see if we can flesh this out a bit. :)

fanlore @ 2010-03-03T15:34:00

2010-03-03T20:37:02Z

Guys, I just noticed: Fanlore has 99,750 edits. How much do you want to bet we can break 100,000 edits by the time the OTW development drive kicks off on 9 March?

I dare you!

::goes on a typo rampage::

Drive-by coding update: Table of Contents and Templates

2010-03-02T02:18:22Z

Hey all,

Just to let you know, based on the discussion in franzeska's earlier post about TOC weirdness due to TOC coding in the templates, we've now taken that bit of coding out of all of the templates. (Let us know if we missed one somewhere.) So while Fanlore will still generate a TOC for any post with three or more subheaders, the placement will be the same as wikipedia's.

Yay? :)

Supernatural Page is Unnatural!

2010-03-01T05:00:04Z

I just went to fanlore to find out something I wanted to know about Sam and Dean and:

http://fanlore.org/wiki/Supernatural/Sam/Dean

!!!!!!

That's really SAD! It's not enough of my fandom for me to be able to add much myself, but that's a sad sad sad page that makes me cry!--is there somewhere I could post beyond here to beg help in making that page better? Is there a community like SPN_Noticeboard? (I mean, there is spn_noticeboard on LJ but its never been used...)

(Xposted from my journal!)

The Wiki Committee's monthly report

2010-02-27T17:38:16Z

Since I just gave this report at an OTW meeting, I thought I would post it here, too. :)

The Wiki Committee is mostly new this year. Our Chair, meri_oddities, is our only member who served the entirety of last year. christycorr joined last summer and cin1607, cordelia_v, and Evelyn Brown are entirely new. We've had a very busy first month!

We've asked Systems to install the Sphinx search engine, as our research has shown that it's the best system available to us now. We are currently working on developing a test plan to test the search engine once it's been installed.

A draft of the "Major Fandoms as Categories" policy has been completed and is ready for Board review, and we've also drafted a policy on images posted to Fanlore (focusing particularly on the question of copyrighted images and explicit images) and this draft has been sent to Legal and the Board for approval.

We're attempting to post regular themes or challenges on the fanlore community to encourage and focus participation. Some of these have been more successful than others, but we'll keep working on it, so bear with us. *g*

Table of Contents behavior

2010-02-26T17:18:28Z

It looks like Fanlore tables of contents should behave like Wikipedia ones: in other words, after the opening paragraph(s) and directly before the first header. Putting in "__TOC__" should force the table of contents to appear at that point. But that doesn't seem to be what's happening. It looks, or at least it looks to me, like the table of contents is stuck to the end of whatever template is in the article. Is there any way to change this? I think articles would be a lot easier to read if we could split the two.

Here's an example of a Wikipedia page with a huge template and a huge table of contents that's still pretty readable because of how they're positioned.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_history

Is this just a problem with the skin I'm using? (Monobook--more or less the same as the Wikipedia default, right?) Is there some editing trick I'm missing?

ETA: The issue is the inclusion of "__TOC__" in some templates. I really think it shouldn't be there. Anyone have reasons it should? The templates that contain this are:

http://fanlore.org/wiki/Template:FandombyText
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Template:FandombyText-RPF
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Template:Fanwork
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Template:GlossaryTerm
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Template:OrganizationCorporation
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Template:PolicyInfobox
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Template:Site

http://fanlore.org/wiki/Template:ArchiveProfile
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Template:AwardsProfile
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Template:CharacterProfile
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Template:Commentary
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Template:CommunityProfile
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Template:ConventionProfile
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Template:EventProfile
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Template:FanProfile
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Template:PairingProfile
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Template:PersonProfile
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Template:UsenetProfile
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Template:ZineAnthology
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Template:ZineNovel
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Template:ZinePublisherProfile

Challenge: Challenges!

2010-02-25T02:49:56Z

cesperanza once said to me that the cold, wet nose test of any fan (using the analogy of an obviously healthy puppy is one with a cold, wet nose) is their enthusiastic attempts to pimp other people into their fandoms. I think the cold, wet nose test of any fandom is the number of challenges, in the forms of fests, exchanges, big bangs, battles or what have you, that the fandom hosts in an effort to enthusiastically encourage participation in the fandom.

So in an attempt gauge our respective fandoms' health, the challenge this week is to create a new page for your fandom called "List of __Challenges" where the blank space will obviously be your fandom's name, and then start compiling lists and links of your fandom's various challenge-type events. You may, if you have a lot, want to sort them by headers, like General Fests & Exchanges, Holiday Specific, Pairing Specific, or whatever you think is appropriate for your fandom. We'll use the Community Profile template for this, like we did for the Newsletters. We would also like you add the [[Category:Challenges]] just to be consistent.

A number of fandom pages on the wiki already have a paragraph or so about some of the challenges in the fandom. If that's the case, just add a line to that paragraph that says something along the lines of "For a more extensive list of challenges, fest and exchanges, see the [[List of__Challenges]]."

This is a big challenge! There's a lot to do. But you won't have to look too hard to find the fandom challenges. We're not far past the tons of holiday fests from the winter holidays and now I'm seeing people starting to get ready for their fandoms' big bang challenges. There's always something happening. So let's see if we can round them up and give them a central home.

the 10,000th article coming closer

2010-02-13T13:26:05Z

Right now there are 9,990 articles, so there probably will be 10,000 very soon, like today or tomorrow, and I thought that the occassion could maybe marked or celebrated somehow?

ETA: I meant by highlighting the eventual 10,000th article on the main page for a while as spotlight, or maybe some sparkly celebratory graphic that announces the milestone in the news and makes it more noticable than just passing the number, or that sort of thing.

Challenge: Those three little words. Or that head smack. Whatever gets the message across. ♥

2010-02-11T02:10:22Z

I've snagged the idea for this week's challenge, since it will roll through Valentine's Day, from thingswithwings. A couple of days ago she made a post full of "Awww!" where she talked about the various ways emotionally stunted OTPs in her fandoms said, "I love you." For example, in due South, you see a lot of "Partners?" "Partners." I'm spending a lot of time in Merlin right now, and their version seems to be "Idiot." "Prat." ♥ ♥

So what is it that you see, in canon or fanon, that makes your heart melt over how obviously in love your favorite pairing is, even if they're not able to admit it? What's that thing that your fandom points out to new people, saying, "See? That thing they did? So. In. Love." Now go to their pairing page and see if it's described, and if not, stick a paragraph in there explaining it. And if your OTP doesn't have its own page, make one!

And post them here, too! I don't know about you, but I could use a week full of "Awww!" :)

Wait Wait Don't Eat Me

2010-02-04T16:39:19Z

I entered the basic information on this, but I don't remember who first twittered about it on Tuesday. Can someone go update the entry with that information? I also set all the links up as external references, but it might be better to make the footnote-type links.

Challenge: Newsletters!

2010-02-04T00:33:29Z

So I was cruising around Fanlore looking at some of the proposals for challenge topics and hit the Newsletter page and saw that it was a stub. And then I looked at the Newletter Communities subpage and saw that it was a sea of red! There are over 100 newsletters listed on the page, but only a handful actually have any information in the wiki. Most are just empty pages. There are links to the actual newsletters associated with almost all of them, which will be helpful, but we really don't want all of the information about these (for me, at least) absolutely critical fannish resources to be dependent on the permanence of an external link!

This should be an easy fix and there are enough fandoms listed, I'm sure there's something for everyone. Let's create proper pages for these newsletters! Here's a handy template that will create the nifty Community Profile box for you. Start with that, and as for the rest, see what you can discover. Who founded it and when? Who maintains it now? Is it inclusive or exclusive? How are they gathering their links? Does it have any particular quirks or controversies? Is the journal defunct? What happened? And if you're in a fandom and you have a newsletter that's not listed, by all means add it!

Let's see what we can get done this week. Next Wednesday, we'll tackle something new. :)

I love Fanlore!

2010-01-29T21:47:59Z

I'm very excited that there's a new committee and some new attention being paid to it, and I love the new ideas rolling out.

But.

Personally, I'm not really to start talking Fanlore up in my LJ/DW and encouraging other people to play. I don't think it's time to start weekly activities, yet, either.

I think it's foolish to start pulling a bunch of new volunteers in while there are some specific issues that need to be addressed, and specific processes that need to be put in place. There are questions strewn through administrative talk pages all over the place. Let's get so many of those answered, and a FAQ going, first.

Otherwise, I fear it will be like the first flush of excitement all over again. A lot of enthusiasum, gradually eroded by the lack of clarity and answers.

Though, maybe an early volunteer task is, going through the old admin talk pages and rolling up the big open questions... I might even volunteer to work on that if I thought there was someone to read and start working through the list once we'd compiled it.

2nd early volunteer task, while I'm on a role: make a list of other fannish wikis, and steal (where appropriate) their good ideas (not their articles: cool features of their home pages, ideas for recognizing their volunteers, etc..

suggestions for the front page

2010-01-29T02:11:12Z

Right now, folks coming to Fanlore see a lot of words, text that doesn't change and isn't that interesting.

A new user might poke at the templates along the left side, something not intuitive and not very interesting. Or that user might type something into the search box, navigating the "go" and "find" function AND the dodgy search engine to find something that interests her or him. That's a lot of hurdles for the casual visitor, a person that may be enticed into staying and contributing. :-)

I'd like to see a prominent section on the front page that adds some enticement to go further. Perhaps a box, right up front, that has "quick links" to things like: glossary terms, vidding, conventions, fanzines, fandoms, awards, publishers, fans/people...

Plus, it would be nice to have some visual on the front page, even if it changes just once a month. It doesn't need to be anything with text, even, perhaps a teaser to a page: a convention program, a logo, a cartoon...

I don't know enough about Fanlore to know if these things are possible, but I think something along this line would be a good idea.

MPH

A mini-introduction and a call for brainstorming!

2010-01-28T02:26:29Z

Hey all!

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Cin and I’m new on the wiki committee this year. *waves* I see that back in September, ratcreature made a brilliant suggestion that we post themed challenges to this comm to stir up more regular waves of activity and enthusiasm and updates to the wiki. Plus, it would give us good excuses to go poke our fannish friends and say, “Hey! They’re talking about X on fanlore this week. Do you remember that? Let’s create/update a page for that on the wiki!” I love the idea! I intend to grab that ball and run with it!

If you check out the original thread, you’ll see a lot of good suggestions already, but I’d like to spend a little time before I throw out the first official challenge and do some brainstorming. What would you like to see? What would work? What might not? At this point, I’ve seen:

What was your first fandom?

What was your first fandom community?

Focus on conventions.

Focus on holiday exchanges.

Did you come into fandom between (pick a span of dates)? Which fandom? Do you remember X event from then? (“It was May, 1999. Ricky Martin was at the top of the music charts, and The Phantom Menace ate fandom!”)

Focus on specific fandoms, or specific fandom events. (“Hey X-Files slash fans, do you remember the “Kiss heard ‘round the world?”)

I think we can have a lot of fun with this! Start lobbing ideas. I’ll take notes and if we get a bundle, I’ll do a poll and we can hopefully get the first up and running next week. :)

loading problems

2010-01-21T08:31:45Z

The wiki has been loading slow quite often for me, but now it won't load at all, and yesterday evening the same thing happened. Do others have the same problem or is this just me? :(

ETA: Of course now just as I posted it loads again, but I'd be still interested if there is some underlying problems for this repeated non-responsiveness I experience.

I wish tedious things were more automated in the wiki

2010-01-13T21:30:32Z

There must be a way to have some kind of bot to do routine maintenance tasks that don't take any thought at all. Like when you make a new fan profile, and the fan is not consistently wikilinked, and the fan is prolific, manually inserting wikilinks to connect the article properly just sucks. Really sucks. I've inserted the same four brackets in dozens and dozens of pages just checking a few names. It took hours and is a task that requires no thought at all. (I'm not talking about difficult things like spotting variances or such just wikilinks that match exactly.) You run a search on the title of the article, go to the result list, check the first article for "is the first instance of this string in double brackets?" if yes, do nothing, if no add the brackets and go to the next result, and do the same over and over and over again. Couldn't there be some kind of maintenance bot checking this for all newly created articles and maybe the old ones in batches or something?

Opinions wanted!

2010-01-11T01:11:27Z

Edited to add, January 11, 2010: I did some tweaking to the usage section of the page. I tied the dictionary cite into the part about aca usage, so that it now clearly says that the fan fiction usage is correct in academia and American publishing. I shamelessly borrowed some phrasing from this conversation. I found some cites, but there is no cite for the idea that the fan fiction usage denotes aca or noob anywhere other than here, and the talk page itself. Anyone got one?

Go check it out and edit that page or something else while you're there--if the urge hits, that is.

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

As I found out on the OTW news site, fan fiction has hit the dictionary. There is a discussion on the Fan Fiction page from a while back about usage on the page itself, and about what that usage says about the person using the, er, usage.

We could really use (had to, sorry) some fresh opinions, and even some cites on this.

Should the Fan Fiction page use the term fanfiction, or fan fiction? Does writing it as fan fiction make people think you're a noob or even an acafan in disguise? Should I have made this a poll?

Opinions here, or on the talk page at Fanlore would be appreciated.