Fandom as a Category v2 Posted

[meri_oddities]

We have posted the revised version of the Fandom as Category policy change Here to the Fanlore wiki. We invite discussion on it. Please post your comments here on Dreamwidth. If there are no problems or issues that require a change, the policy will become final in seven days after posting (4/28/2010).

At that time, we'll start adding the fandom categories and we'll put out a call for help with moving and changing the pages the need it.

Comments

[frogspace.livejournal.com]

To be honest, the RPF discussion doesn't make much sense to me. People don't need fandom categories, they are not defined by a specific fandom. Not even actors. Not even actors people are fannish about. Or do you plan to add fandom categories for fan writers, vidders, etc. as well? In my opinion categories such as actor, musician, etc. are more than adequate.

The way I see it, what we need fandom categories for are
1. fanworks (like stories, vids and zines), websites, archives, communities, awards, newsletters, challenges and other things fans do
2. pages that we move from subpage to top level
3. fandom specific glossary terms if there is so much to say that they don't fit on a fandom glossary subpage and need separate pages.

Extending fandom categories to people doesn't seem right to me.


Associating the Existing Pages to Each Other

In the previous conversation on Dreamwidth it was decided that Name (Fandom) will be the standard for associating existing pages. This is the format we're using now on Fanlore with disambiguation pages. It makes sense to continue to do it that way.

So the Hermione Granger sub-page becomes Hermione Granger (Harry Potter)

I think that part ended up there by mistake. If we have fandom categories, the pages already *are* associated to each other. Including the fandom in the title doesn't add any additional value and creates a lot of unnecessary redirects. Unless there is a second Hermione Granger, for example a fan writer who uses that pseud, I would simply name the page "Hermione Granger". That would also follow our approach to disambiguation where we name a page whenever possible with the correct title and create disambiguation only when it becomes necessary.

[ratcreature]

Yes, I agree that the fandom addition to character seems like unnecessary work, that serves no purpose at all.

As for the RPF thing, I assumed the category would be put on PRF fanworks ad archives and such. Like all popslash fanworks would go into a popslash category, all Lotrips into that, only apparently RPF fans don't have such clear divisions if I understand the above correctly, because actors are in multiple movies or something, so you wouldn't be able to say whether the Orlando Bloom fic goes into POC RPF or Lotrips or something else. But I'm not into RPF so I have no clue. I would have thought you could just organize the categories like the RPF fans sort their own communities and newsletters, or go with the most common delicious tags as seen on fic, or something, but maybe they don't organize like that?

[frogspace.livejournal.com]

so you wouldn't be able to say whether the Orlando Bloom fic goes into POC RPF or Lotrips or something else.

Huh. I wouldn't see that as a problem because usually the author has already labeled it and posted it to fandom specific communities or archives and I thought we would just go with that label. o_O

[ratcreature]

I have no idea how they label, but the comments above seemed to say that AO3 had difficulties? I mean, like the discussion above says, we would need a single name for a category to have it as category, but people posting on LJ can label their fic anything they want, and to me it seems RPF is often just labelled with pairing names or smooshes, like someone could label their fic "Pinto" and leave it as that but someone else could call it "Star Trek RPS" and yet another might put on a "NuTrek RPS" label or any number of things. So what people put in fic headers doesn't necessarily help much.

[msilverstar]

exactly -- that's why I'm hoping things can go in multiple categories. I mean, what do you do with Johnny Depp/Dominic Monaghan?

[frogspace.livejournal.com]

what do you do with Johnny Depp/Dominic Monaghan?

I hope the same thing we would do with a SGA/SPN crossover novel. Johnny Depp/Dominic Monaghan both belong to an established RPF fandom so the fandom categories for Lotrips and POTC RPF would apply. I think what confused me was the idea to make each real person a fandom category as well.

The way I remember it, most RPS used to be rareslash, meaning you had two well known actors who had maybe a few stories written about them but no fandom of their own. These stories were usually only referred to as actorslash. When actors also had a fandom, the fandom had a name, like for example DamonAffleck which also included many of the people who surrounded the main pairing.

I would go with actor RPF (or maybe "Rare Actor RPF"?) for all fanworks that don't have an established fandom, music RPF for all musicians who don't have an established fandom, etc. That seems more practicable than creating categories based on just one person and also more practicable than including established RPF fandoms in the same category as rare actor RPF.

[msilverstar]

Actor RPF seems like a useful category, maybe more a tag and self-creating navigation.

But if there's a top level Severus Snape page, and Uhura page, and Peter Petrelli page, it seems weird not to have a top level Viggo Mortensen page...

[frogspace.livejournal.com]

But if there's a top level Severus Snape page, and Uhura page, and Peter Petrelli page, it seems weird not to have a top level Viggo Mortensen page...

Huh? But real people are top level pages. *is even more confused* I thought we were talking about categories and not pages?? Having a top level page is not the same as being a category. Callum Keith Rennie (http://fanlore.org/wiki/Callum_Keith_Rennie) is a top level page, Category:Fiction Writing (http://fanlore.org/wiki/Category:Fiction_Writing) is a category.

[msilverstar]

we have tons of cross-posting and multi-archiving, and the opposite when the works are all in the creator's journal or site. I'm not sure if it's any worse than complex fandoms (trek etc.) but it's certainly not obvious.

Name (Fandom)

[aethel]

So we would name pages like [[Clark Kent (Smallville)]] and [[Clark Kent (Lois & Clark)]], but [[Hermione Granger]]? That seems sensible.

Re: Name (Fandom)

[frogspace.livejournal.com]

Yes, like that. :)