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

[troisroyaumes]

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.

[anenko]

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.

[rbarenblat]

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?

[anenko]

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/
brokemycaps
drama_llamas
showboating
dorama_chat

[troisroyaumes]

I know D-addicts definitely does have discussion forums! There's also a fair bit of drama discussion on Vikii too.