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

[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.