Categories: this week's theme, apparently

[aethel]

msilverstar posted a while back about drafting a guide for categories, since there isn't one yet. Meanwhile, I've been running around the wiki, adding and removing categories according to my own interpretation of what they mean. But sometimes I just have no clue.

So! I thought I would collect my thoughts in one place and see what other people think. Here are a few of my working definitions of categories, along with questions and hair-pulling:

Discussion - articles about the art of fannish discussion (e.g. glossary terms like "meta"), plus articles about discussion forums (newsgroups, lj comms, e-lists, etc.). This one had me pulling my hair out for MONTHS. Do you include the discussion theme articles like "Misogyny in Fandom"--that don't take place just once, but over and over and over--in this category? I removed this type of article from the category, but only based on my own gut feeling.

Debate - articles about particular discussions of a controversial nature. All-out flamewars not based on any particular theme listed in the debate category would fall under Fandom Occurrences instead (although several pages count as both an occurrence and a debate).

Fiction Writing - all fanfiction and many zine articles, all e-lists/newsgroups/lj comms where fic is posted, plus the article called "Fan Fiction" and other glossary terms related to the creation and enjoyment of fic.

Non-fiction Writing - any article about the art of fannish non-fiction writing generally (e.g. glossary terms) AND any article describing a particular piece of non-fiction. Articles about wikis or discussion forums aren't currently assigned this category, so should we clarify that "Non-fiction Writing" applies to discrete pieces written by one or a limited number of fans? And should it be applied to non-wiki websites that are canon/fandom resources (see Yoxley Old Place and Argo and Bliss)?

ANOTHER QUESTION: where do articles about rec pages go? Recommendations and reviews are themselves non-fiction, but are *about* fiction.

Print Media and Zines are fairly straightforward, but are there any articles in "Print Media" that are not also "zines"? Convention program(me)s? What else? I suspect these articles will drown in the sea of zines if we don't add another category for them.

Offline Spaces - should this category be applied to conventions? Most (although not all: see out-of-con.txt) conventions are offline spaces, yet they are not listed here. What say you? (ETA: Actually, some conventions are here.)

Fan Activities vs. Fan Communities - Lots of articles have both of these categories and nothing else. To me, this suggests a need for another subcategory. An additional problem is that almost any fanac could be labeled a community or vice versa: for any fanac, it takes a group of people to do it or appreciate it or use it or talk about it. Fan communities are all based on a shared activity by definition! We need to draw the line somewhere, or these categories will be useless. When someone looks at the category page for fan communities, which articles do we want them to see?

Comments

[ratcreature]

Calendars are sometimes printed but not zines. Posters. Fanart prints that sre sometimes sold.

[aethel]

Aha, and now I see a few in the RecentChanges! So, those could also get the category "visual art" rather than a new subcategory.

[ratcreature]

Well, calendars don't need to have art. They could have poems, or quotes, or even fiction. Some have art, but not all.

[aethel]

Do you think we need a calendar category? Or maybe a miscellaneous category?

[ratcreature]

Right now I've listed all calendars I could find on the calendar page, but I guess if there ever were that many a category might be useful. Though maybe a slightly wider one for the fannish answer to pro-merchandise would be the way to go, i.e. calendars, cookbooks, whatever.

[ratcreature]

YES! Hasn't this been suggested ages ago, and there was supposed some discussion by the wiki commitee? Did I hallucinate that?

[aethel]

Make that three of us on the same drugs (good drugs)!

[meri_oddities]

Yes, and it was decided that there would be a fandom catagories. The policy is in the works (my bad for not finishing it yet). I need to work on setting it up.

[aethel]

From what I saw on the wiki, pretty much anything printed seemed to be labeled a zine if it was made by fans and wasn't hardcover. But I didn't look at everything: print media has become a very heavily populated category. Which could mean we should include more subcategories.

Speaking of printed things that are not zines, Boldly Writing has the "perspectives on fans" category, but no "non-fiction writing" or "print media"--should these be added?

[elf]

articles in "Print Media" that are not also "zines"?

Could include newsletters, pro magazines (which wouldn't be fanac, maybe, but I'm not seeing where else to put fan-oriented prozines like officially-sponsored club publications), convention programs & during-con newsletters, and potentially famous individual letters. (Petitions? Manifestos?)

I've got the 1986 & 87 BayCon Anime Guides, which were fan publications describing the plots & characters of untranslated anime. They'd go in print media, and aren't fanzines; not sure what else to call them.

[aethel]

I'm thinking we should have another subcategory so that these items can be found easily, but all I can come up with is "miscellaneous."