Fandom by country/language?

[sqbr]

A while ago (before Fanlore) I was curious about the difference between fandoms by country and couldn't find much information. I came across some interesting information today about Russian fandom and decided I'd help out anyone else interested in the subject by adding it to Fanlore..and couldn't find any pages about Russian (or Russian language) fandom.

I decided to make a page following the template of some other country or language specific fandom page..and couldn't find any. The closest was tags about the country a work is set in, which is really not the same thing.

So: is there a template/example for this sort of thing I'm missing? If not, should there be one? There's been lots of discussion on metafandom about fandom in non-English-speaking countries which I think would make for interesting reading and I imagine it could be helpful to have links for non-English speaking fans to find each other. I also think that specifying when things are country specific would help avoid the "Fandom=American/English speaking fandom" thing. Also there's a lot of Japan/Japanese specific topics which it seems logical to have a Category for.

I'm still very new to editing the wiki and feel like this sort of thing should be done in a proper consistent way so am uncomfortable just chucking a page together based off my best judgement, especially since all I have to add to the page is a few links and "this is a stub".

The links about russian fandom, for anyone who's interested or feels like making a page:
http://henryjenkins.org/2007/07/oh_those_russians_the_not_so_m.html
http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/07/oh_those_russians_the_not_so_m_1.html
http://ruff.fanrus.com/

Comments

[sky]

Also there's a lot of Japan/Japanese specific topics which it seems logical to have a Category for.

This is a bit tangential to the actual suggestion, but I feel I should point out that Japanese-speaking fandom doesn't really have a presence on Fanlore per se. There is a lot of discussion of the extensive English-speaking fandoms for Japanese + other Asian media, though.

Sorry if you already knew this and I'm just reading your post wrong D:

[hl]

I think it's fair to say that any language fandom other than English don't have any presence on Fanlore to speak of. That's probably the main problem about getting them documented.

[sqbr]

True, but there's also currently no easy way to categorise fairly well represented stuff like Australian fandom, or English language fandom of Japanese canon, and I think if things were set up to categorise them then the same system could more easily be used to document fandom in languages other than English for the odd times when someone does have something to say about it (which might then make people from those fandoms feel more included, maybe?).

[hl]

I'm going to appear really ignorant here, but I'll just ask: are there national fandoms as internal divisions of the English fandom?

[sqbr]

The distinction is rather subtle online, but there's definitely divisions when it comes to stuff you actually do in person. In Western Australian fandom we have cosplay clubs and a slashcon as well as transformative work-fandom subsets of bigger scifi or anime cons, and all of these are influenced by the different culture of Australian scifi and anime fandom.

Also the relevant laws (copyright, child porn etc) are different.

[hl]

I knew about the laws... I just didn't ever note the difference online. Man, do I miss stuff. O_O

[franzeska]

I've definitely noticed some differences once you get to more obscure fandoms too. Like, you can get every Harry Potter thing everywhere on the planet, but there are plenty of things on Australian tv that no one in the US has ever heard of.

[sqbr]

*nods*

Good point, was acting like Russian fandom of English-language works is the same kind of topic as English language fandom of Japanese works, and they're not.

I guess there's language and nationality, and then there's the canon and the fandom.

So you have stuff like:
-US English language fandom for English language canon from the US (most of this wiki)
-Japanese language fandom for Japanese language canon from Japan (very little if any of this wiki)

And then there's:
-Australian English language fandom for English language canon from Britain
-US English language fandom for Japanese language canon from Japan

And then you get stuff like:
-Portuguese language fandom in Brazil for the Portuguese translation of French-language canon from France
-English language fandom in Germany based on the (English language?) translations of Japanese language canon from Japan
-English language American fandom making Japanese style Doujinshi based on English-language British canon
-English language Malaysian fandom making Japanese style Doujinshi based on the English translations of Spanish-language canon from Mexico (ok that probably doesn't exist. But it could!)

HMM. I mean these wouldn't all need separate pages, but the system should have some way of including and categorising them all so that people can find and add to the relevant information when they want to.

[ratcreature]

I think there is an inherent problem to get a lot of representation of non English-language fandom in an exclusively English-language wiki. Not least because it is more effort to add anything as you have to translate and make it comprehensible in context and what not (while being careful not to talk about the source too). Like when I added content for a German fanzine, I couldn't just retype the toc, I had to translate, because it's not like it would be of any use to have a German text in an English wiki.

Also, outreach is generally less than optimal, so not even fans for whom the wiki easily fits see it as a place to document stuff.

That said, in principle I don't think there need to be separate articles for different international followers of a fandom, sections or subpages on the fandom pages would work well enough if anyone was interested in adding things about fan activities that are local to them or online in a different language in the first place.

thinking...

[aethel]

in principle I don't think there need to be separate articles for different international followers of a fandom, sections or subpages on the fandom pages would work well enough

I agree with this approach. However, I think it might be interesting also to have separate articles describing how "fandom" in general is practiced in different countries/different languages. So, there could be an [[Australian Fandom]] page in addition to relevant info on Australian fans for a particular fandom. As for how these would be categorized, they might fit under "Fandom by Source Community" or maybe a new subcategory (Fandom by Geography?).

Re: thinking...

[ratcreature]

I have to admit that I'm puzzled what fandom practices are supposedly so different between countries, that they would be some country specific quirk across fandoms rather than something fandom specific. E.g. I can see it worth mentioning that comic fandom is less superhero centric outside the US, or local conventions, clubs or zines that exist for fandoms, but all that would be fandom specific. I guess timelines of local developments or country fandom histories might be interesting, especially for the pre-internet time, though I can imagine that kind of article to be really cringeworthy too.

Re: thinking...

[franzeska]

I know I'd personally find it very interesting to have articles like (and this is just hypothetical since I have no idea whether this really reflects Spanish language fandom at all):

Spanish language fandom
--Countries with a lot of fic writers/artists/whatever
---Peninsular Spanish vs. Mexican Spanish vs. South American Spanish and snobbery, cultural issues, wank, etc.

--Popular fandoms
---[link to the Spanish fandom section of the HP article]
---[link to the Spanish fandom section of the LOTR article]
---[link to the Spanish fandom section of the anime/manga articles]

--History
---A lot of anime got translated to Spanish before it was translated to English...
---Early SF conventions in Spanish-speaking countries

--Web presence
---Do people use ff.n or archives at all?
---IRC? Boards? Mailing lists?


I mean, honestly, even if it were just a list of links to subsections of specific fandom articles, I would find that interesting. This type of article wouldn't necessarily have to have a lot of its own material beyond links or make any grand, sweeping (probably cringeworthy!) comments about country-specific quirks.

I think I'd see this type of article less as something useful for people from that culture (even ignoring the possible language barrier) and more as an answer to the question: "So I'm a clueless US fan, and I know absolutely nothing about fandom in [location/language]. Where do I get started looking for info?" (Which, granted, is very US-centric, but I'm thinking of me specifically here.)

Re: thinking...

[ratcreature]

I can see why it might be interesting, but I doubt it's a realistic goal in the near(ish) future. I mean, generally the fanlore approach as I understand it is that fans document their own subfandom community and history for themselves which then naturally is also interesting for people who are not members of the particular subfandom. It is not so much people researching fan communities and then explaining them like anthropology or something just because there is a yawning gap currently in fanlore's coverage. So to get some non-English language fandom documented in-depth you'd need to attract a lot of people from there to represent it, but why would anyone chose to document that in an English language wiki?

Sure, there are currently fans from different places active in fanlore, but my guess is that for many this is because they are into international online fandom. While I am a German fan, but have no clue about "German fandom" or its general history or anything like that, or much interest in it. So I'd be no help there. I wouldn't even know where I could find German fans who could add such info. So it's not enough to have people from countries active in fanlore they have to be into localized things to be helpful too. I have never read any fanfic in German, or been on a German mailing list or anything.

I mean, it is a sort of vicious cycle, similar as the blank of furry fandom that was talked about in another entry. As furry fandom seems to be active elsewhere to talk (like maybe the furry wikis? I am clueless), there is nothing in fanlore to make it attractive to that fandom, and apparently not enough overlap with the currently active fandom sections to get things started and to promote it, so no there is no apparent benefit for anyone in that subfandom to invest time and work in fanlore rather than in their own spaces.

The only way I see that kind of thing changing is to get fanlore large enough that as a kind of service it creates enough attention that interest ripples outward, and more people see benefits of joining and representing themselves, because it is larger or nicer or something more anyway than any other small niche wiki.

Right now not even many people from English-language media fandoms are attracted to fanlore, or see much point in representing those, even though the fit is much easier.

I'm not saying it isn't worth a try or shouldn't be considered if we ever manage to actually do outreach or advertise fanlore widely, but I think it is a bit pre-mature to design some structure of country focus articles when there is no idea how to interest people in filling them in.

[ratcreature]

Well, I think the categories on fanlore completely suck anyway. Almost as much as the search. I mean, you can't even easily display all articles relevant to a fandom, because fandoms aren't categories either. There are a few articles about non-English stuff (I have added articles about a German fanclub and fanzine for example), but I just treated it like the other articles, with the same kinds of templates used for English fandom so these aren't country labelled or anything.

[rodo]

Agreed. I'd really like it to be possible to seperate canon source, zines, etc. by the their language and/or country of origin. Not to mention that the templates are sometimes a bit inflexible when you want to add something.

I also think there needs to be a guideline on where and how to add international info. I added a lot to the article about age statements/age restriction, a lot of it using examples from German fandom, and I wasn't really sure where to add it.

PS: I agree with you on the subpages/sections.

[sqbr]

Oh? I'd just assumed the problems I'd encountered were limited to the somewhat obscure bits of fandom I was investigating. Hmm.

[ratcreature]

No. If you think of some fandom or subfandom the chances that there is nothing or not much there yet is bigger than to find an article giving a great overview, and that is even in fandoms that are huge Western media fandoms. I mean, the Twilight fandom article is mostly about the anti-fandom without saying much about the fandom at all aside from listing some communities and archive links without context that I added so that there would be something positive about the fandom (I couldn't imagine how Twilight fans would be encouraged to join to add stuff if the stub for their fandom was basically how much it sucked).

Similarly, huge fandoms that are somewhat sprawling often are often a mess, with some bits added, but much more being blank, also a mess organizationally, examples for that would be the article cluster that is there for Star Trek, which is has quite a bit on TOS and Kirk/Spock, but little yet on the other series like DS9 or TNG. And the problem that the series that are their own fandoms are squashed into subpages (well imo it is a problem, there was a discussion about that a while ago here when someone else brought up the subpage pro/con issue), with the main page "Star Trek fandom history" 90% about TOS and Kirk/Spock, with its own TOS subpage being almost bare... or look at the articles covering HP, there isn't even one for Harry/Ginny shippers or for Harry/Hermione (aside from the glossary explaining "Harmonian" in the context of extreme ship wars and that glossary entry isn't even linked from the HP entry, as I just noticed...I probably could fix at least that...) Anyway, many large fandoms are kind of an intimidating mess with some bits there, but not great structure or overviews. I've heard someone plans to make something like the portal pages on wikipedia for HP, I think?, so maybe getting huge fandoms structured and more accessible so that it is easier to expand them is in the works, but IDK.

Basically , there is just not that much stuff there yet (compared to how much there could be), because very few people participate. I mean, there is the heroic project of zine documentation by Mrs Potato Head, but fanlore hasn't attracted enough people.

[aethel]

All true, alas. Not only do we need outreach, but I'm thinking we also need to be more systematic--specific fandom projects and cleanup initiatives with volunteer team leaders, like WikiProjects on Wikipedia. Or something.

[ratcreature]

Yeah. I think it has become clear over the last year that it won't just grow automatically because the infrastructure is there. It needs to be something more than just room to grow. I agree that projects and more specific guidelines too (for structure and cleanup) might help too.

[(Anonymous)]

Here's an article about Finnish Fandom:

http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:45KO6vl2p90J:www.helsinki.fi/jarj/hysfk/marvin/fandom.html+%22captain%27s+Log%22+fanzine&cd=53&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us