committee post: Seeking a few good anime and manga fans!

[rbarenblat]

The Fanlore wiki committee has been brainstorming this year about outreach to different fan communities, especially fan communities which are unrepresented or under-represented on Fanlore. Anime, manga, and related communities are an area where we’d like to do some outreach.

Before we really dive in to trying to spread the word about Fanlore in various anime and manga communities, we want to make sure that we’ve created a good wiki structure in which fans can add pages. Here are the category pages for anime and manga as things stand now:

http://fanlore.org/wiki/Category:Anime
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Category:Manga

We probably need to reexamine how the above format categories are assigned to fandom pages. Do we want anime movies to be in the Film category? Anime/Manga may also need a separate Fandom by Source Community category (and what should we call it?). One issue we’ve become aware of is that the terms “anime” and “manga” may exclude similar material created in countries other than Japan (manhua in China, for example). We’re not sure what the right answers are. Here are a few ideas:

Option 1: Merge the Anime category with Cartoons and the Manga category with Comics.

Anime + Cartoons → Cartoons
Manga + Comics → Comics

Option 2: Create a new category, Animation, for the combined Anime and Cartoons categories. Merge the Manga category with Comics.

Anime + Cartoons → Animation
Manga + Comics → Comics

Option 3:
? something we haven’t even thought of yet!

We’re hoping for a system that will accommodate many needs, including those of manhua, manhwa, and a variety of animation and comics fandoms from around the world. If you have knowledge in these areas, we definitely want to hear from you! We hope to find a few fans who are excited about the prospect of chronicling and preserving anime or manga fandoms and their histories, who can help us 1) figure out how best to structure this corner of the wiki and 2) reach out to anime and manga communities for more participation once we have a good structure in place.

Might you be that person? Let us know by dropping a comment on this post, or contact us using our contact form. And please feel free to signal-boost this post on your own journal or in the fannish spaces you frequent. Thanks!

Edited to add: stay tuned -- a new post is coming from the Fanlore wiki committee which contains a new proposal for how to handle categories on the wiki, based in large part on response to this post. We've made a follow-up post, which is here: Category proposal.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I'll be blunt here - if Fanlore goes with Option 1 or 2, all they'll do is alienate the animanga community even more than it is now. And considering this post opened with the desire to reach out to the animanga community, I'm not sure that's the direction you want to go in.


Problem Number One: You can't try to be inclusive of other fans by forcing them redefine how they identify themselves - particularly in a project that's meant to record fannish history.

Problem Number Two: The boundaries between media in animanga fandom are really, really blurry. The proposed solutions to make things simpler are going to turn insanely complicated once you get down to details. There's a reason the animanga community and it's sister communities have a history of looking like overlapping blobs.

Problem Number Three: This proposal already failed once. The same exact debate already happened on the tag wrangler mailing list and it did not go well. At all. A lot of western media wranglers were surprised and confused when the animanga wranglers had serious problems with the umbrella categories of comics/cartoons/sequential art. And those were animanga fans who were already open to the idea of introducing the AO3/OTW to the animanga community. I know this is a different project, but the basic argument is still the same.

Problem Number Four: I'm an animanga fan, but I still don't see the comics fandoms or western animation fandoms taking too kindly to these new divisions either, and yet I notice they were never mentioned in this post. Possibly some thought should be put into their side of the issue as well?

Problem Number Five: The way Fanlore is approaching this problem is going to get you one of two reactions from the majority of animanga fandom - a) they'll get pissed or b) they'll stay completely indifferent to Fanlore, not even bothering to engage with it.


I don't know what to do about manhua or other nation-based fandoms. They're not my area. But animanga is my area and I can tell you that the only thing the proposed solutions will do is keep the animanga fandom presence on Fanlore at a bare minimum. Personally, I think there should be categories for how fans define their own fandoms, not how Fanlore or other fans believe they should be defined.

[kylara]

Yes, this.

I wish you were not anonymous, anon, so then I could friend you.

[(Anonymous)]

<3!

I'm mostly on LJ, heh.

Oh! That's another thing - wiki committee, if you're serious about wanting to expand your animanga user base, you can't just advertise on DW. You have to put out feelers in LJ, maybe ff.net, too. Just sayin'. And I'd start with fandoms that trend a tiny bit older, but are still growing.

[kylara]

Same, but I drop by for Fanlore and meta stuff. If you, or any other anime/manga fans, want a Dreamwidth invite then you can message me on LJ.

And yes, definitely. Anime/manga fandoms seemed far less interested in Dreamwidth than other communities. A post on the main Naruto community about spreading fandom to Dreamwidth was met with derision (although that was for more reasons than just moving to Dreamwidth, there was nonetheless not much of a spreading).

Although I personally cannot, in good faith, endorse the OTW or any of its projects to anime/manga fandom following the server names fail. Not until I'm reassured they have their priorities sorted out for the better.

[rbarenblat]

The wiki committee definitely intends to work on outreach to animanga fans who congregate in places other than DW -- and places other than LJ, for that matter, too. That's on our to-do list! But before we begin to do that, we wanted to make sure that the existing wiki structure around anime and manga was the right one, so that when we start trying to really spread the word about Fanlore to anime and manga fans and they hopefully come to the wiki, they'll find the existing pages on anime and manga structured in a way that works. That's why this post exists in the first place.

Also, speaking now as an OTW board member, I'm happy to listen if you have thoughts or suggestions to offer about how we can do better at being inclusive of non-western fandoms in future. Feel free to send me a DW message anytime.

[kylara]

Also, speaking now as an OTW board member, I'm happy to listen if you have thoughts or suggestions to offer about how we can do better at being inclusive of non-western fandoms in future. Feel free to send me a DW message anytime.

Before I can consider that, would you acknowledge and explain what you did (or didn't do) regarding the server names discussion? Did you prioritize a casual line about vote tallying, which was probably written without any intended meaning, over the supposed values of diversity that were written with care on the OTW website?

[rbarenblat]

During the server names discussion, all of the board members were engaged in long and intense conversations. We meet via chat each week, and the subject of server names and diversity occupied the bulk of several meetings; it also took place over email and chat. Many people within the org, who serve on various committees and were involved with the server name poll in various ways, came to board meetings to argue passionately for one solution or another, and we listened and asked questions and then talked some more.

What I personally did was participate in those conversations and try to help the board reach consensus on the immediate question of how to handle the results of the server name voting, while also trying to keep an eye on the reality that the issue of fannish diversity is far bigger than this one server name poll.

One thing I've done since the server name poll is initiate a conversation among board members about how each of us sees the org and our mission, and how each of us understands the mission statement's call to "serve the interests of fans by providing access to and preserving the history of fanworks and fan culture in its myriad forms." Another board member has initiated a brainstorming session about the org's diversity initiatives and how we can do better in future. This week's board meeting is slated to be dedicated to those two conversations.

Does this answer your question?

[kylara]

No, not at all. I've read this several times now and nowhere in there do you say what your decision on that issue was.

I'm already aware that the board had secret talks about it. Your dodging my question is informative only in unintended and unfavorable ways, because I'm left to speculate that perhaps you didn't make a decision at all, or that you're not willing to be transparent at least on a personal level. That fosters no trust with me.

[rbarenblat]

I'm sorry you feel that I'm dodging your question. You ask, Did you prioritize a casual line about vote tallying, which was probably written without any intended meaning, over the supposed values of diversity that were written with care on the OTW website? -- my answer to that question is "no, I didn't, and neither did the board." But the way you're framing the question feels quite loaded to me, and I don't think it's a fair description of what went on.

I'm not comfortable sharing what I said in our closed sessions because my comments were part of a broader conversation, a conversation which was presumed by all parties to be confidential. These weren't 'secret meetings' -- they were conversations between the board and a variety of org staffers who held a variety of passionate (and contradictory) opinions on how we should handle this situation once we realized that it was going to be contentious and that feelings were going to be hurt no matter which decision we made.

I stand behind the board's decision, and I ask you -- and everyone reading this -- to believe that we were doing our best to honor a variety of different needs in a difficult situation and that we take the org's commitment to diversity seriously.

[anenko]

Hi! You don't know me, but I've seen you around on various OTW-related posts, and agree with a lot of what you have to say. Would you mind if I PM'ed you about something related to this subject?

[kylara]

Hello! I recognize you from around as well. I wouldn't mind at all; my PMs are open.

[rbarenblat]

Thank you for this comment -- we really appreciate it. I'm co-chair of the OTW wiki committee and I'm also on the OTW board, and I want you to know that we're listening.

The reason we made this post is that we know that we need the input of people who are involved with animanga fandoms to help us figure out how to structure this part of the wiki, and we'd like to get that sorted out before we begin the project of greater outreach to animanga fans.

I hear you saying that the way we're approaching this is going to make animanga fans angry. Can you suggest a better way to approach this? (I'm really asking; that's not a rhetorical question.) We thought it made sense to try to figure out the best structure for this section of the wiki, create the structure, and then work on inviting people to come and create pages to document the fannish things they love. But if you think we're going about it wrong, please tell us how we can do better.

*prays the html goes through*

[(Anonymous)]

I hear you saying that the way we're approaching this is going to make animanga fans angry.

On it's own, the technical aspects of creating categories in Fanlore doesn't seem like that big of a deal, and truthfully, it isn't. It's just a way making the wiki more streamlined, and I get that.

But it's not it's own. The OTW's baggage is Fanlore's baggage, and at this point I think that anything that even looks like deliberate erasure or neglect toward anime/manga fans is going to make some people angry. Even worse, it's going to make many more fans indifferent to the project once they hear rumors about the OTW from their angry friends.

This particular issue may be totally innocuous, but from three steps back (and the vast majority of non-Western fans right now are at least three steps back and one platform over), it will look like a pattern that includes the Yuletide fiasco, the problem with naming the servers, and the tag wrangling issue that happened mostly behind closed doors but that a bunch of people know about from the failfandom meme.

From a technical perspective, this post and it's suggestions make a lot of sense. But from a PR perspective...? Everyone says they want anime/manga fans (and gaming fans, and jpop fans, etc) to feel welcome at Fanlore/OTW/AO3. And the approach people seem to be taking towards this is, "We'll set it up, create the boundaries and lines, make everything neat before we invite anyone over." Like they're cleaning the house for a visiting guest.

And that? Is the problem. You don't want to treat these people like guests or children or people you are inviting into your already built world. You want these people to help build the world with you.

I know the sentiment is coming from a good place, but I don't think treating animanga fans like guests in your home is a good idea if you want to integrate them into the community. Fanlore is supposed to be a wiki built by fans from the ground up, fans who decide how they want to record their history. But...there are hardly any non-Western media fans here because Fanlore hasn't done an outreach yet. ¯\(°_°)/¯

Just to pull from your own post - The reason we made this post is that we know that we need the input of people who are involved with animanga fandoms to help us figure out how to structure this part of the wiki, and we'd like to get that sorted out before we begin the project of greater outreach to animanga fans.

So...who are you asking, exactly, if you want the opinions of animanga fans, but you haven't made an effort to recruit animanga fans for the project yet? I don't understand that. Because it sounds like you're asking the existing Fanlore community (majority Western fandoms, DW based) how to structure an animanga/other area. This comes across as very backward to me.

I don't think you should create the structure first and then decide on the right time to invite the anime/manga fans in. I think you should start with a sizable population of animanga fans, and then let them help create the structure that they're supposed to be a part of. Only right now, I don't think Fanlore has a diverse enough selection of animanga fans to make decisions about stuff like this.

Re: *prays the html goes through*

[rbarenblat]

You've identified exactly the challenge that we're wrestling with on the Fanlore wiki committee -- we want to involve animanga fans in Fanlore, and we know that those of us on the committee aren't deeply involved in those communities (a few Fanlore committee members do consider themselves anime fans, but we know that on the whole, animanga fandoms aren't the ones we're coming out of.) We were thinking that we would start out by asking here, on the Fanlore comm, to see if we could find any animanga fans who are already somewhat involved with Fanlore who might want to help us a) figure out how to structure the wiki better around these fandoms and b) figure out how to do the outreach work we know we need to do. But you raise a good point that even if we can get a few animanga fans involved right now, we might not have a diverse enough selection of animanga fans to make decisions about stuff like this.

Do you think it would be better for us to focus all of our efforts on outreach, even though the current wiki structure around anime and manga and manhua etc is not ideal, and trust that once we have a larger population of animanga fans using the wiki they'll be able to establish the structures that they want and need? Our concern has been that if we start to do the outreach, and people start showing up to explore Fanlore, and they see that the structure isn't intuitive or doesn't match what they think it should be, they'll take that as further evidence that the wiki (and/or the OTW in general) isn't welcoming to them. And that's the last thing we want. You note that anything which even looks like erasure or neglect of animanga fandoms will make animanga fans feel even more slighted, and that's exactly what we don't want. But we're worried that if we have the wrong categories, people will perceive their fandoms to have been neglected or erased even when that wasn't our intention at all.

I don't know what the right answer is, but you've given me/us good food for thought here. Thank you so much.

[branchandroot]

I'll jump in, here.

I would recommend emphasizing, in any outreach, that the anime/manga side of the wiki is a work in progress and very unfinished. And then be ready to field suggestions for structure that differ significantly from the way the Western media pages and categories are structured. The sources act very differently, and the fandoms act pretty differently too. One size is not going to fit all, not when that one size has, to date, been completely based on only one shape of sources.

This is why I howled about doing outreach a lot, lot sooner, because now Fanlore is going to have to retrofit some things. I think that should be acknowledged going into this. But it isn't actually too late, as long as the anime/manga (and other!) fans who are invited in are not expected to just make do with what's already there. There should be an expectation that contributions will result in organic change.

One general style recommendation for outreach posts: they should not be in that perky "this is something new, come try it!" tone with exclamation points. I think they'll have a better chance of being heard if they acknowledge that Fanlore is missing representation from a/m and has been for a while, and that the people currently on the boards and committees sincerely want to fix that problem. OTW, if it's on the horizon of most a/m fans at all, has some history to live down, and seeming to ignore that won't help the organization's case. So I'd recommend a slightly more humble "hey, we're missing you guys, we'd really like to see you, do you want to make this thing talk about you too?".

[rbarenblat]

Thank you for the gentle advice on the issue of tone. It's easy for those of us who really like the wiki and/or the org behind it, and want to share that with others, to come across as perky and full of exclamation points. (I know I fall into that pattern a lot of the time.) But you raise good points here, and we will do our best to take them to heart.

fwiw, I think everyone on the wiki committee (and for that matter everyone on the board) acknowledges that Fanlore is missing representation from animanga fans (among others), and we sincerely do want to figure out a way to fix that. For my part, I hope that conversations like this one are a good start.

[(Anonymous)]

I`m interested