fanlore | how much say do fans get over their wiki articles?

how much say do fans get over their wiki articles?

I think this should be discussed and laid out more clearly, because the practice for some articles seems to differ from what the policies say.

From looking at the policies it seems to me that a fan's say over their wiki article (unlike their personal user page) is mainly due to the Identity Protection policy (when it comes to a say what name(s)/pseud(s) the wiki uses), and the Fanlore:Ethical Standards for Community & Content, which lay out how to be careful when writing about living persons. The most relvant bits of the latter seem to be that things said about fans ought to be accurate and not harmful to them or the communities.

In practice on artist pages in particular we seem to accommodate detailed display and content wishes of the artists, that seem to take precedence. (see the discussion pages for Gayle F and Caren Parnes) The gist of the argument I took away from the last time this came up was that the wiki should accommodate artist's display wishes because otherwise they might ask to have the art removed, especially the higher quality samples they scanned themselves. And while I'm still not sold on the idea that the best way to have artist pages on the wiki is with these huge galleries with many pictures -- aside from the page load issues it seems to me at odds with the "Fanlore is not an archive for all fanworks from every fan" policy that claims "Fanlore will not act as an index of all of the fanworks that any individual fan may have created, though references to individual fanworks and pages for controversial and/or significant fanworks is always desired." -- I was fine with that, but display is one thing, the most recent issue is wrt the content.

I could perhaps see an artist making the argument that she'd rather not have the explicit art displayed prominently on their profile article as falling under the "no harm" rule (depending on public image questions, whether it's the legal name that is associated, also the nature of the pornographic art etc), but the "Back to Back" for example is not pornographic in any way, so I guess it's because the artist doesn't like that piece? I mean, I have no idea, but it was removed because of the artists preference. And it is not so much that I think displaying that cover is essential to the article, but I think it's worth discussing this as the precedent this seems to set.

IMO as much as I enjoy looking at pretty fanart on the wiki, especially for artists who don't have much of an other online presence elsewhere, it is still not a gallery display site, and I'd rather make do with a few crappy pictures than have some special wiki pages that are "endorsed" by the fans they cover, and fully or partially exempt from the standard editing procedures (whether formatting or content), while regularly with all other articles the editorial control is shared between all wiki editors collectively.

At the very least I think there should be discussion of this on a wider basis than a few talk pages.

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I could perhaps see an artist making the argument that she'd rather not have the explicit art displayed prominently on their profile article as falling under the "no harm" rule (depending on public image questions, whether it's the legal name that is associated, also the nature of the pornographic art etc)

That's how I understood it and I can see the point of not wanting to have explicit art on a "legal name" page. However, I agree that removing art just because the artist doesn't like it anymore or removing the name of the artist from a zine articles where the art is displayed goes too far.

Yeah, there are different issues. For one I can follow the reasoning, the other I'm still confused about.

And I mean, I'm not out to be confrontational in the wiki's presentations, but with this handling we seem to go in a sort of "veto" direction, giving (some?) fans the final say what is put into their article, even without a policy reason. And I don't like that, and it that is not what we did during that Melody Clark kerfuffle for example either. There the fan who objected to the content on their page edited and deleted stuff, and that wasn't let stand, but worked out with edits, until iirc the article was balanced enough so that everyone could at least somewhat live with it. And sure, that is a different case in that was more confrontational, and maybe having some cover there or not is not as crucial, but I don't want this to go entirely unremarked either, because IMO it gives a wrong impression of the wiki's overall approach.

And I don't like that, and it that is not what we did during that Melody Clark kerfuffle for example either.

True. That one was a different situation and I was actually really impressed that we managed to solve it like that.

I don't want this to go entirely unremarked either, because IMO it gives a wrong impression of the wiki's overall approach.

Good point. I guess what it means for the artist pages is that we need more transparency when an artist has a request about removing something, changing the way it's displayed, etc. so that the discussion page can document the consensus of the editors and other people can read up on why this or that decision was made. (I just searched for the squiggly line to sign my comment. Too much wiki editing! *g*)

Yes, transparency would help a lot. I think that for most pages it's achievable to get to a result that is okay and satisfying for all sides, but I'd prefer that it is still an editing consensus, unless there is a clear policy-founded grievance (like factual inaccuracies, identity exposure, some harmful effect etc.) when of course fan in question can expect swift correction/removal and their position is the deciding one.

(I keep wanting to link with brackets...)

what was the solution?

You can find the whole discussion here: http://fanlore.org/wiki/Talk:Melody_Clark

The page went through many changes at the time and the solution was to add more of her fandom involvement (see the long list of zines with dates and details) so that her fan page wouldn't be about that one wank and all the editorializing from the part about the wank was removed so that mostly just two quotes remained, the original comment about her story and her response to that. Readers can draw their own conclusions.

Actually no names were removed. just brought into conformity with the pre-1995 name usage - on the page with explicit art. The request came after a google search by a non-fan led them to the adult art.

We did have permission to use the full real name, but like many, I don't think it is clear to fans that by using their real name that if, somewhere in the depths of time, they have written or drawn adult material, there may be linkages.

of course, in this case since some of the adult art is still being displayed on the fanzine publisher's page with the full real name...which tells me that Fanlore is moving up on Google Page stats and that's a good thing.

ratcreature can you stress that there are no names being removed from zine pages? It is important to keep facts at the forefront of the conversation.

I don't get what you want me to do.

ratcreature can you stress that there are no names being removed from zine pages? It is important to keep facts at the forefront of the conversation.

I think you meant me? I was referring to MPHs suggestion (on the talk page of the artist in question) to shorten the name on the zine pages to initials only.

ah it was you. I was wondering why the discussion had made a sudden left turn. :-)

yeah, I didn't even consider that one (initials only) as an option. The pre-1995 naming conventions allow a lot of leeway for muddying and it is my go to suggestion when someone feels uncomfortable with increased visibility.

I suspect this is one of the areas where fh.net has poisoned the well--Laura's "it's HISTORY I'll include it if I want" approach made a lot of people uncomfortable with the whole wiki concept. Some refuse to participate at all; some just insist on the smallest amount of info possible being displayed about them.

And plenty of fans don't want an open record of their more controversial works, or their more explicit ones. I'm not sure how fanlore can negotiate the boundary between "we'd like a useful fan archive" and "artists can remove info they don't want to be seen."

Also, being a wiki & editable by random people, it *needs* consistent policies. Needs something like "covers of fanzines at 72 dpi are always okay;" if there are specific exceptions, those need to be noted somewhere easy to find. Random-New-Helper needs to know whether she can scan the covers of her 25 zines & painstakingly add them to their zine pages, rather than find out after doing so that three of the artists insist on their content not being shown. Telling someone "oh, we removed your contribution because someone else didn't like it" (even if that someone was the artist) is a great way to lose wiki editors.

Well, the image policy in general also still seems to be stuck somewhere in a committee, so there is a wider problem with that too.

I think what bothers me is that it feels to me as if there was some sort of final veto like thing, even without reasons given. Obviously it's one thing when someone makes an argument that they do not want their explicit art which was maybe circulated on a smaller scale connected with their name in google on our wiki, when they don't do anything like that with say an own website. That's a reasonable point about exposure, and a fan should have say about that as our policies state.

But with other aspects of articles I don't mind when a fan makes their argument for what/how to present things and is part of the editing consensus of their own article, but their opinion shouldn't necessarily be the final word, much like it wasn't in other content conflicts about maybe more controversial things than a cover in a gallery (like I mentioned in the comment to Doro above).

I agree that in this kind of situation, permitting an artist to veto content at will seems unreasonable; maybe the policy that should be invoked in these cases is the "plural POV" policy -- acknowledging that with respect to fanworks, both the creator and the viewer/consumer of art need to be represented among the POVs expressed.

This looks like two questions tangled into one: how to ensure that fan-artist pages are treated consistently sitewide, and how to avoid getting the wiki into the business of hosting what amount to personal archive/display sites for artists.

I'd think that the answer to the first question is to set a maximum resolution that the wiki will/should use for images hosted on its servers and/or displayed in wiki articles, and stick to it. That may involve replacing some higher-res images with lower-res versions, but that's reasonable on two grounds: (1) to help minimize unnecessary load on the wiki servers, and (2) because the most appropriate place for higher-res images is the artist's personal site.

The answer to the second question, when the artist says "but I don't have a personal site", seems obvious: that's what AO3 is (or will be) for. And if the artist's needs surpass what AO3 is able to offer, at such time as AO3 can commit to fully supporting its fanart side, then it's past time that that artist set up a personal site separate from the wiki.

WRT the formatting/size issues it's been my impression that we are more interested in having the content for the wiki from those artists i.e. pretty zine covers and fanart, than that the artists are interested in using our wiki to have an online presence, just that if their art is to be displayed, they don't want to look it unfavorable, for example in tiny gallery thumbnails. I think some of the other wiki editors have asked the artists, and not that the artists came to the wiki. (But I haven't talked with any artists myself or negotiated anything, so I can't say for sure what any agreements were.)

[nodnod] I can tell from the rest of the comment-stream (crossposters R us!) that there are more dimensions to this than I'd realized. I'd still think that a consistent set of standards for image resolution would help...once it emerges from committee. Maybe we need to gently kick the relevant committee....?

I'm not sure kicking will help, but I'll pass it along to the committee.

My apologies for the unfortunate phrasing; I clearly didn't have enough context -- or enough brain just then -- to make the (faint) attempt at humor even marginally appropriate.

To give a context, to date I know of only 4 artists who have expressed strong preference as to how their zine covers and art are being displayed. Last year, we had very little artist buy-in (and a bit of hostility and suspicion about Fanlore's motives and how it plans to use the art) so I approached 3 artists to see if they'd allow us to populate their pages with as much fan art we could find to help 'sell' the idea that fan art and Fanlore could be successfully combined. The bulk of the feedback (before today) had to do with them asking for images to be displayed slightly larger than thumbnails. This is the first time I've run into an artist asking that artwork be removed from their profile page. Most everyone seems to understand the reasons behind the request for removal of the explicit artwork. The request for the removal of the non-explicit artwork is now being discussed.

Which is why I mentioned up thread about us not letting a few examples drive policy. I do agree that spelling out when to escalate and to whom when someone requests removal of art would be a big help to editors. Not all fans are willing and able to engage directly with horde of wiki editors asking them "why?why?why?", so having a central contact as another option is a wise move. Note I say 'as an option,' because some fans seem to be very willing to debate on the Talk pages. ;-)

The larger issue that ratcreature raised in her OP should be taken out of the artwork context and reframed into an issue that cuts across all of Fanlore: how much user input will Fanlore allow on the user profile page. What to do when the user requests deletion of info. And when to escalate? Because this question (user control and deletion) will not be an 'exception' and will be something the community will most likely face more often.

Edited 2010-08-01 02:56 (UTC)

The larger issue that ratcreature raised in her OP should be taken out of the artwork context and reframed into an issue that cuts across all of Fanlore: how much user input will Fanlore allow on the user profile page.

Um -- I think you mean on a non-user profile page, right? Because isn't the "user profile page" the one you acquire when you create a Fanlore account and become part of the editing community, as distinct from a page about you that might exist because you're a fan or a creator? And one of the things about those user profile pages is that the user does have control over what appears thereon.

OTOH, I entirely agree about framing the issues as general policy questions wherever it's at all possible to do so.

I think that so far there have been only 2-3 artists who have expressed any clear preference on how their images are displayed. Making a policy for the exceptions may be overkill (ex. deciding that no high quality images can be displayed anywhere because one artist asked for a few explicit images to be removed from her profile page along two non-explicit covers). My thinking is that the policy should be: contact the Fanlore committee for these non-std requests so they can discuss with the artist how best to balance the needs.

if it turns out this is more than a one off thing, that's when it makes sense to start making more rules. especially when some of the rules we're discussing may detract from Fanlore's ability to get continued by-in from a broad spectrum of fandom.

I see this as two issues:

1. How to handle requests to remove art from an artist page.

2. How to handle requests on the display of art on an artist page (size, placement, layout).

The first goes to the heart of Fanlore's purpose documenting fandom history and needs to be carefully handled.

The second seems like a request that Fanlore might be able to accommodate in order to meet artists half way. Within reason because as ratcreature pointed out, we cannot host all the artwork of an artist. We can host however all the artwork found on zine covers and sample art from within zines because - well because that's what Fanlore does. I don't want to start picking and choosing which zine covers to display on Fanlore.

But if an artist gives permission to showcase a nicer zine cover image, that benefits more than just the artists - it benefits everyone. And if an artist wants to go smaller than the 150kb limit Fanlore is currently considering, then again, that is something the artist can discuss one on one with the committee.

Edited 2010-07-31 16:46 (UTC)

I think my problems with your proposal is that the artist discusses this with the wiki committee but not the editors who are working on the article.

I think the committee is the right place if an article goes against policy and needs to be corrected without question, maybe because it got something wrong, like an attribution of art or worse factual errors (and the fan can't or doesn't want to figure out the wiki editing themselves), or there are issues of unwanted exposure (whether whole names or problems like that the wiki connects explicit material with a name in an unwanted way that an artist otherwise doesn't etc).

But I think for other concerns, less critical things, the regular editing process and talk page and such is the way to go, whether initiated from the fan directly or even reposted from whomever they mailed and then discussed on the talk page. That may seem a bit overblown in this particular case, because it does not concern many covers (as most removed were the explicit ones which is the different issues), and not any article text, but for me it's more the appearance that is given by these edits upon requests. Like I said above, I'm not against fans having input on their own pages, the goal is after all to gather a fandom history, not to be needlessly confrontational, but it should be a process with the wiki editors who sometimes also invest a lot in articles.

WRT picking and choosing I agree with your point. I mean, in general I would love artist pages that discuss more of the artist's development, and illustrate the text with specific and relevant to the text art examples, and then a gallery maybe in addition to that rather than the main thing on the page, but I actually do not understand the point of the policy that fanlore shouldn't be an index that I linked and disagree with that policy. Sure we don't want to *archive* all this stuff on fanlore itself , but I find bibliography type lists useful to have, and would actually think them a useful thing in a fandom history.

Your last sentence confused me: how would an artist or subject of a wiki article know that they should contact the committee?

As a gardener & editor, I don't know much about when to escalate, who to contact, and so on. I hate to say more policy, but these things would be nice to know.

I agree. something on the front page with a list of subject/names would be helpful. as would a policy "if you need help with x,y,z or have questions on x,y, z please contact xxxxxx"

as an editor, I too have no idea when to escalate and on what issues when people do contact me. last night, I had to wing it.

right now, the big issues we seem to face are: profile pages, artwork and name usage.

I think that's a good idea. I'll bring it up at our meeting this coming week. But anything you have a question on you can bring to the committee. We're here to help with whatever comes up. Seriously.

Will definitely do. I had a tight deadline to act as she is leaving on a trip. I also sent her your name and email address in case something else comes up while I am away next week.

I saw that. And yes, she should feel free to contact us. Anyone should feel free, really.

adding a contact e-mail address on the front page would be a great start to facilitating that direct contact. ;-)

I went through this, it was complicated and a policy would be good. An author friend of mine discovered a page about a zine that's composed of two of her stories, and was upset. She wants a "lower profile" now, says the zine has stopped making copies at her request, and is talking about taking her stories off an archive, so it's not limited to fanlore. On her request, I took out links to her current LJ username, to the original archive, and to the archive.org versions of the stories. She was OK with leaving the zine cover images up.

This feels like a reasonable compromise, and it would be nice to have in an explicit policy.

I came across something similar - in that case, not only was the zine out of print, but the fan *was* removing her fanfic online. In her case the name was a psued, so we removed links to her blog and left the rest up.

If I had to come up with a policy it might include the 'lowering profile' test: is the fan objecting to just Fanlore or are they taking steps to remove their online presence elsewhere? (keeping in mind large portions of the zine info has been pulled from current online sources that are using full real names, so targeting just Fanlore is neither consistent nor effective). If they are focusing just on Fanlore, then escalate? if the fan is lowering the profile everywhere, then you, as editor can do X,Y,Z.....well that's the policy part.

From there, if the issue also intersects with real names, then the pre-1995 name conventions would be one automatic 'go to' option, providing that you (the editor making the change) is also changing wikilinks so the connections are not lost. If the fan wants complete erasure or just initials, then escalate? (There is one fanzine publisher who is coming in and removing even the first names - but only for a few people so perhaps this is the result of a fan request?)

I don't think the guidelines need to be too overly complex - in fact, some of this is already addressed. But to help out the volunteer editors, a tweak and a bit more clarity would be helpful.

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how much say do fans get over their wiki articles?

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Context Behind The Art and Further Thoughts on User Input

Re: Context Behind The Art and Further Thoughts on User Input

Policy should be set by the exceptions

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