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

[alessandriana]

Mmm, of the two, option 2 sounds better to me (some anime fans get bristly at having anime get called 'cartoons'); that said, it feels very weird to me to lump anime and manga in with animation/comics. This is mostly an instinctual 'but we've always separated them!' reaction, but I suspect it's one a lot of people will have. Is there no way to just do a Category:Manwha or Category:Manhua?

[salinea]

Manga + Comics → Comics
Why not go Manga + Comics + Bande Dessinée + Manhua + Manhwa + Historietas + All the others -> Sequential Art? If you restructure by media, that's what makes the most sense at being inclusive.

[(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]

>> Option 1: Merge the Anime category with Cartoons and the Manga category with Comics.
>> Option 2: Create a new category, Animation, for the combined Anime and Cartoons categories. Merge the Manga category with Comics.

No and no. This will only ostracize anime/manga fandom even further than it already is. Merging the categories erases the origins of anime and manga, and displays an ignorance or dismissiveness regarding feelings held within the anime/manga community. Anime and manga aren't just mediums; they're fandoms in their own right, even as they include fandoms for specific anime/manga series'. They should remain separate with their own categories.

(As a side, I recommend changing "cartoons" to "animation" anyway, since "cartoon" carries a connotation for being silly or childish, while animation doesn't so much. Cartoons can also be still images, just like a comic, so animation would be a clearer category name.)

>> Do we want anime movies to be in the Film category?

If it's had a theatrical release, I don't see why not.

>> Anime/Manga may also need a separate Fandom by Source Community category (and what should we call it?).

I don't follow what this means. Could you explain?

>> 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).

Yes. Yes it would. Perhaps it should, because it's an identity of its own. "Anime" and "manga" are specifically Japanese terms, are recognized as Japanese by their English-speaking fandoms (which is relevant as this is for the English-language wiki), and encompasses styles, tropes, and a history unique to the Japanese industry. While styles are definitely adapted and shared within the global animation and comics industry more often now, (e.g. Teen Titans, Batman Beyond, and Avatar: The Last Airbender all drew heavily on the anime style despite being American cartoons,) especially with its Asian neighbors, anime and manga are specifically Japanese.

The articles would be richer to note the influences (professional and fandom) and acknowledge the confusion of boundaries, as well as acknowledge material that might be commonly thought of as anime/manga despite not being from Japan. But "anime" and "manga" are Japanese. Don't erase that.

There was a similar "issue" (i.e. non-issue) in the Doujinshi article, if I remember correctly. Doujinshi is also specifically Japanese, but English-speaking fans will draw comics in doujinshi-style and refer to it as doujinshi, and a few "doujinshi" also come out of China in Chinese, creating a gray area of classification. And that's okay. But generally, doujinshi is Japanese, which is what the article is about, even while acknowledging the expanded definitions and uses. Just as anime and manga are Japanese, the articles can still acknowledge wider uses of the terms and material. As for the categories, if an English-speaking fan did a comic in doujinshi style and called it doujinshi, and I wrote a Fanlore article on it, I'd add the doujinshi category. For sources and fanworks not from Japan, let the fandoms decide if it should be tagged as "anime" and/or "manga" themselves. Or create new categories. But let them decide how to handle that.

The OTW's relationship to anime/manga fandom is shaky at best at the moment, and the suggestions in this post are not going to help that. If you want to show inclusion and respect, please don't mess with how we define ourselves.

[kylara]

Yes, this.

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

[(Anonymous)]

You said this much better than I could have, thank 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.

Fandoms by Source Community

[aethel]

To clarify, the "anime" and "manga" categories mentioned in the post are actually structured as format categories and NOT fandom categories, which is why we were pondering Anime/Manga as a separate Fandom by Source Community category--in other words, maybe it should have a fandom category instead of the current structure, where the intended use of the categories is unclear. Already under Fandom by Source Community we have SF fandom and Furry Fandom, and if we created a "media fandom" or "animanga fandom" category, that is where it would probably go. Or we could just move the current Anime and Manga categories there, where they make more sense.

The current parent category, Fandoms by Source Text, has a number of different format subcategories that basically list titles of source texts--Television, Books & Literature, Film, Comics, Cartoons, Anime, Manga, Games, Radio, Theater, Real People. These categories were instituted before we got fandom categories, and now we also have individual "fandom by source text" categories all listed together under the main category, not sorted by format or fannish tradition. So, rethinking how we were using the format categories seemed like a good idea.

[extempore]

are recognized as Japanese by their English-speaking fandoms (which is relevant as this is for the English-language wiki)

For me, this somehow hits the nail. Over the last weeks I started to dig around in the fanlore wiki and several times I met a "wall" when I wanted to add something or edit content. With "wall" I mean I had to stop, because I couldn't quite identify with what I read or I didn't quite know where to fit in certain content, which categories to use etc. I noticed this especially on the "anime" and "manga" pages when this topic emerged on the talk page (anime and manga outside of Japan).

I understand that fanlore wishes to be inclusive and to accept all corners of fandom. But to me the question is: from what point of view? It cannot be inclusive from a fan's PoV, I think, because everyone experiences fandom differently. But I also was told that yes, it should be from a fan's PoV, as it is them who will bring this wiki to life and diversity is a good thing and wouldn't it be good, if there were several different views of something on one page so people could get an impression of the different "colors" of fandoms? (I have a similar impression about AO3, btw.) But when I, as a fan, edit the page, I do it according to how I experience my fandom. And in my english language fandom Anime is not Avatar/Airbender, but soley stuff that comes from Japan. But there are enough other fans who see it differently. =) And when it comes to the part of actually categorizing the content - that is one tough nut to crack.

I don't know, how to solve this. Perhaps it's something that isn't even seen as problem other than by me: ;) I just can speak from my - so far short - experience with fanlore as someone who played around with a wiki for the first time and as someone from animanga and game fandom: I am still confused about categories (somehow I miss a clear overview or structure, like a "categories" page that shows me exactly what where is) and that adds to my confusion about how to properly sort things (the sitemap shows me some structure, but I can't quite... grasp it for my personal use, I guess ^^;). Before Frogspace told me about the Fandom by Source Category, I was rather confused about how to tag pictures I uploaded, for example.

As for the naming/sorting suggestions - I would go with the second. As I understand it, Animation and Comics would be the "roof categories" with Manwha, Manga, Anime, Cartoon etc. the various branches? I don't think there will be a perfect solution that makes everyone happy, but I also think that's not what should be the goal. The goal should be to offer a frame in which fans can operate adequately to tell their stories, a frame that is not too complex (or it becomes a barrier for newbies), easy to navigate and understood by most people. Animanga will be a challenge because of its "blob-ness", because it merges with other aspects and media, too, like video games or live acts. (And also because of the OTW's history with that part of fandom. But that's for another discussion.)

I'm just not sure, if fanlore can be or should be a place to discuss terminology with the goal to find a single, all including punch line. Hm.

[zebra_in_dream]

OTW is the first time I heard of sequential art and so far I haven't seen a definition of what sequential art actually is. It's utterly non-descriptive and unknown to me.

Just going by the words: art arranged in a sequence, I'd put everything in which changes with time or space (theater, movie, tv shows, cartoons, comics, manga, etc).

[facetofcathy]

I have no opinion on the answer to the actual question of categorization--it's not my place to say as I'm not in any of these fandoms.

But, before even broaching the topic, an explanation of what the various types of categories are, how they function and how they might be used (or completely ignored) by readers of Fanlore is surely in order.

Category structure on Fanlore has changed dramatically since it was first introduced, so to a user familiar with wiki structure circa 2009 who hasn't kept up with the changes, their (mis)understanding of how the wiki works would actively prevent them from even knowing what you're asking.

I've kept up with the changes, and I'm a bit confused as to how this category change would effect pages and facilitate page creation. Someone who is not very, or at all, familiar with the way Fanlore structures itself now is going to imagine a definition and use for category that might be miles away from reality. People are already doing that very thing in comments here, and at a bare minimum making the links to Category pages clickable might get people who have never paid attention to Category debates to go look at the pages as they are now.

The Fandom by Source Community question is likely to be meaningless to anyone but an experienced Fanlore editor who is savvy about how templates work. I wonder if approaching that question by pointing to the various infobox templates, which are the things an editor making a new page actually uses and also the things that affect page content, and then seeing how the categories fall out around needed templates might work better. Or to put it more simply, is a mashup infobox and a couple of single source infoboxes needed with specific content for East Asian sourced fandoms or do the existing ones work? A question I'm not qualified to answer, however.

[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.

[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.

[salinea]

*shrugs* well I can just tell you that as a non native speaker of English who lives in a Europe, when I hear "comics" I think "American superhero comics" not the medium of... well sequential art (there's no fucking other word for it that I know of -_-) in general; so having other traditions of such medium folded into it feels very dismissive and patronizing.

[zebra_in_dream]

When I, as a non-native speaker of English who lives in Europe, hear "comics", I think "non-moving pictures telling a story".
The whole thing is probably very language and culture specific. So as has been said before, first it should be decided whether the basis is supposed to be global but in the English language or based in the western English culture.

And when I hear manga, I think comic from Japan, no matter how much the German publishers want to push their German artists' work as manga or how much the US publishers want to sell me their brainlessly decolored stuff with a sticker calling it manga.

I always found that certain regions and languages just don't have their special word for comic. There's no way I know to say "comic from Germany" except by saying "comic from Germany". In German the umbrella term is comic, including US-Comics, Mangas, Manhuas, franko-belgische Comics, etc.
And if I were to be talking in Japanese, I'd talk about manga and not make a distinction of where it is from, except if that's important when it would be manga from xyz.

Forcing another phrase which isn't very well known and just comes out of the English mindset again to artificially create an umbrella term for comics, manga, manhua and co is imho just as dismissive and patronizing.

[saekhwa]

I wish I had the ability to articulate myself like this. All I have is absolute agreement with this and what the anonymous commenter above said.

[salinea]

When I, as a non-native speaker of English who lives in Europe, hear "comics", I think "non-moving pictures telling a story".
well, that'll explain how you never heard of "sequential art" before. And there I thought it meant the expression was much less well known than I thought.

Forcing another phrase which isn't very well known and just comes out of the English mindset again to artificially create an umbrella term for comics, manga, manhua and co is imho just as dismissive and patronizing.
... I really don't follow your argument. It's an expression meant to be a neutral, generic description of the medium. That's what makes it great as a name for a category that is meant to encompass all different regional or distribution-network specific expression of the medium. It makes it clear that the specific American tradition of comics isn't meant to be the defining standard of what's put in that category, with manga & whatnots added as a token effort.

But it seems there's no good solution then! One way is dismissive according to me, the other one is dismissive according to you! What shall we do?

[extempore]

But, before even broaching the topic, an explanation of what the various types of categories are, how they function and how they might be used (or completely ignored) by readers of Fanlore is surely in order.

Oh please yes! What confused me a great deal was that fandom by source text categories seem to be on the same level as "individual fandoms", at least according to the sitemap. It would make more sense to me, if individual fandoms would fall into the various categories like RPF, Manga, Radio etc. I don't know how these things work, but to make it easier, perhaps fandom categories could be connected to their respective "parent folders"? (For more, see below.)

You are right, a lot of the categories didn't make any sense to me - or rather, their hierarchy and placement didn't. It would be great, if they could be made more "understandable" for people who have never before worked on a wiki, for fans who just want to write something about their fandom and not waste time digging through pages of explanations for each strangely named category. ;)

When I started, I was presented with an empty window and the suggestion to "just start typing in the box below". The "see for help" link offered more links to a FAQ. So I went to the "start a new page" site and was confronted with a four-step list - and two of the steps had me stop. A name for a page and the need to format it, sure, that's familiar. But what template to use for what page? And what category? Without additional digging around (and sometimes not even then) there's no way to know that as a newbie. I would have loved to have the three or four most common pages readily linked to make it easy for beginners. For example, the page templates for a source fandom (i.e. the series, book, movie), one for communities, for stories, perhaps for pairings or characters or debates/controversies in fandoms, too. (Of course, that's a highly personal impression on what "most common pages" could be.)

Or perhaps there could be a fool-proof way for peeps like me, something to klick through: say, I want to create a new page for an anime, then I'd follow a prominently placed link called "create new page", from there I could choose which "parent" category, which would be "Fan communities", then "fandom by source text", then I'd click on Anime and would be presented with an empty page where the correct templates and categories are already inserted. Perhaps with a note on how to add the new fandom category or an additional step where I could insert the fandom category (either click on a link to an already existing one or write a new one) and it would be placed in the page as well.

I have no idea, if that would even be doable and I'm sure it's way too much hassle for experienced Wikiwriters. But not all of us are and there will be people who have no idea how the Wiki community works. I pestered Lian and Frogspace, otherwise I'm pretty sure I would have turned away again and not be bothered with adding my share to Fanlore.

And boy, will I ever be able to just write one-sentence replies? -_-;;

tl;dr: A bit easier access for n00bs would be greatly appreciated! =D

[zebra_in_dream]

It's not neutral or generic and is no less problematic than comic or manga in differentiating on what is included and what isn't. It's a rather unknown term created by Eisner and further established by McCould, it doesn't look like there is much on those term that's not in conjunction with them. No need to muddle the waters even further by yet another term for the same thing.

As for what can one do:
Not umbrella them, if apparently not term serves to umbrella them.
(Or umbrella them one a monthly basis. January goes to Bande dessinée, February goes to Manga, March can be Comic

[troisroyaumes]

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.

*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.

[salinea]

No need to muddle the waters even further by yet another term for the same thing.
it's because it's not "another term for the same thing" that it is useful.

Not umbrella them, if apparently not term serves to umbrella them.
That might work. Though I assume rbarenblat asked the question as part as the whole fanlore outreach to animanga communities because there's a concern having manga and anime as its own thing makes it a bit ghettoized, plus the problem of excluding similar material created in countries other than Japan. And I do think there are some values in having umbrella categories for works in the same medium, even if that medium has variety of different traditions (perhaps that's cuz I, myself, love the medium in most of those traditions and have fandoms in most of them though :p).

(Or umbrella them one a monthly basis. January goes to Bande dessinée, February goes to Manga, March can be Comic
Err, that's kind of dorky, and probably just as dismissive for the newcomers to fanlore who sees it without knowing it rotates.

[(Anonymous)]

Seconded, thirded, +1000.

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.