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

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Speaking as a fan of animanga as well as manhwa and manhua, I think the best way to include manhwa and manhua is to allow them to be media categories in their own right, rather than leave them as stubs or try to lump them together with manga. This way, if pages for manhwa and manhua fandoms get created on Fanlore, they can be correctly categorized instead of being erroneously assigned to Manga.

The discussion on the tag-wrangling list concerned the fact that manhwa and manhua fandoms were being grouped into Anime and Manga on AO3, even though anime and manga in English-language fandom indicate Japanese sources. The problem is not the exclusion of manhwa and manhua from the anime or manga categories--since anime and manga never encompassed manhwa and manhua to begin with--but the fallacy that manhwa and manhua are somehow subsets of anime and manga when they possess their own styles and separate histories. (The total failure of the stub for manhwa to acknowledge this fact, as well as the misleading information provided--a substantial number of manhwa series are not serialized in magazines at all--are also symptoms of this problem.) Whatever solution you do choose, I think it is important to start off by understanding exactly what are the objections being brought to the table by manhwa and manhua fans.

Seconded, thirded, +1000.

Ouch. The manhwa article on Fanlore really was painful. I poked at the article a bit--mostly using your post on manhwa and representation as a resource. Would you like to double-check to make sure that I didn't misrepresent what you wrote, or add anything horribly offensive on my own?

Thanks for being so quick to respond!

I think the part about manhwa being "mostly black and white" is no longer strictly true, due to the rise in popularity of webtoons--and I think it might be nice to add something about webtoons, although perhaps that might not be under your purview--but otherwise it looks much better. Thanks again!

Some resources that might be worth linking to from the Fanlore page:

iSeeToon's Outline of Manhwa series

An introduction to Korean webcomics

Korean Comics: A Society in Small Frames

List of manhwa licensed in English

100 Years of Korean Manhwa

I'm glad the page looks better!

I added the links you provided, and a brief mention of webtoons. Do you think webtoons should have a page of their own? Or perhaps mention should be made of them on the webcomic page?

At the moment, I don't know if webtoon fandoms are "separate" enough from the rest of manhwa fandom to merit their own page (I feel like most discussion of manhwa these days encompasses webtoons?). But it sounds like a great idea to mention webtoons on the webcomic page, especially since so much of the most popular manhwa these days are webtoons.

I was thinking more along the lines of a short glossary page. Or maybe a redirect to the main manhwa page? I added a line about webtoons to the webcomic page.

With your help, the manhwa page no longer looks quite so stubby and manga-focused. Thank you very much for your help!

If there's anything else you'd like to add, feel free to jump in with an edit or two.

(I'd really love to get someone active in Korean-language fandom to contribute to the site. I wonder if, once the OTW begins it's outreach program, someone might approach DramaBeans for her take on fandom. She posts fan-made posters from time to time. I think I actually added one to the K-drama page. . . /tangent)

If I come up with anything else to add, I will try to wade in myself! :)

Dramabeans sounds like a good idea...I would also recommend reaching out on Soompi, since it's such a huge haven for K-pop and K-drama fandom and has tons of fanfiction to boot.

Awesome :) I've read very little manhwa, and have no experience with the fandom. There's still so much more to be added to the article!

Soompi is a great idea! Do d-addicts and am-am have general discussion forums? There are drama Tumblrs that might be worth reaching out to, as well. Hmm. I have a few mostly dead LJ comms friended that I could point out.

I am excited to see these suggestions for places where we can reach out to animanga fans, and specific fans to whom we should reach out, etc -- please share links if you can?

Heh. Well, we kinda wandered away into K-drama territory. Some of these sites are members-only, and I'm not sure if they're all right for promoting Fanlore/AO3/OTW (I only ever visit d-addicts and AM for subs and/or raws, and have no feel for the wider site culture, for example).

animanga_news

Dramabeans: http://www.dramabeans.com/ (has a Fanlore article)
Soompi: http://www.soompi.com/ (has a Fanlore article)
d-addicts: http://www.d-addicts.com/forum/
Viki: http://www.viki.com/
AM-Addiction: http://www.am-addiction.com/
http://kdramascenes.tumblr.com/