committee post: Category proposal

[aethel]

The Fanlore wiki committee would like to thank everyone who's participated in our recent conversation about categories and anime / manga / related fandoms. Several commentors on that thread sparked the following idea (especially branchandroot -- thanks, branchandroot!), and we'd like to know what you think about it.

The idea is this: what if we remove all of the format categories, and replace them with a flat, non-hierarchical list of fandom categories? Here's a visual representation of how things work now:


[ Image Description: The "Fandoms by Source Text" category, encompassing both medium-based categories like "Film", "Real People", and "Gaming", and individual fandom categories like "Harry Potter" and "World of Warcraft". The "Fandoms By Source Community" category is unused. ]

Basically, we're rethinking how the category hierarchy for Fandoms by Source Text works. "Fandoms by Source Text" includes all fandoms that are focused on a single "text" or set of texts, like Final Fantasy, Jane Austen, or Brokeback Mountain. Currently, there are a number of "format" categories underneath the main "Fandoms by Source Text" category that we inherited from multifandom archive structure--these categories are not much used at all because a) the wiki isn't a fanfic archive and b) we now have categories for individual fandoms. Meanwhile, "Fandoms by Source Text" has a sibling category that is underused: Fandoms by Source Community, for fandoms that don't correspond neatly to a single canon text. Like Media Fandom, Anime & Manga Fandom, Filk, Vidding, J-pop, Manhwa, etc.

The restructuring plan has two parts:

1. Delete all of the format categories from Fandoms by Source Text, leaving a flat, non-hierarchical list of fandom categories.

2. Make better use of Fandoms by Source Community by moving the Anime, Manga, Real People, and Comics(?) categories there.

And then fans can make as many more fandom categories as they need, according to the naming conventions within their own communities. (We also recognize that some fannish traditions have arisen which don’t consider themselves part of an overall fannish culture; it’s not our intention to prescribe categories for those traditions, but rather to let those fan communities self-define as they will.)

Here's a visual aid for the proposed changes:


[ Image Description: "Fandoms by Source Text" category now encompasses only fandom categories like "Coffee Prince" and "Blake’s 7". The "Fandoms by Source Community" category now has categories for things like "Media Fandom", "K-Drama", and "Gaming". These in turn also lead to individual fandom categories, e.g. "Media Fandom" leads to "Blake’s 7" and "Harry Potter" while "K-Drama" leads to "Coffee Prince". ]

(This is a rough sketch to illustrate how potential fandom categories might be linked to one another and is not intended to be complete or prescriptive.)

Categories to be deleted:
Books & Literature
Cartoons
Film
Games (?)
Radio
Television
Theater
(and "Real People" could be renamed or split into whatever categories people choose.)

---

Here are some examples for how wiki pages might be categorized according to the plan.

No fandom that has a fandom category needs to have a page categorized under Fandoms by Source Text. For example:

Category:Fandoms by Source Text
.....Category:Harry Potter
...........Harry Potter (the page)

So the page "Harry Potter" would get the Harry Potter category and no other category.

And:

Category:Fandoms by Source Text
.....Homestuck (the page)

The page "Homestuck" would get the Fandoms by Source Text category because there is no "Homestuck" category yet.

And:

Category:Fandoms by Source Text
.....Category:Naruto
.........Naruto (the page)

Category:Fandoms by Source Community
....Category:Anime & Manga
........Category:Naruto
.............Naruto (the page)

The page "Naruto" would get the Naruto category.

And:

Category:Fandoms by Source Text
.....Category:Blake's 7
.........Blake's 7 (the page)

Category:Fandoms by Source Community
.....Category:Media Fandom
.........Category:Blake's 7
.............Blake's 7 (the page)


The page "Blake's 7" would get the Blake's 7 category, but would no longer have a "Television" category. Each fandom category would be its own thing.

---

Would this proposed solution -- getting rid of format categories such as "Television" and "Film" and letting each fandom category (including "Anime & Manga," "Manhwa," etc) be its own thing -- work for you? We want your input; please tell us what you think!

(If there are no objections to the plan above, please feel free to start moving categories on May 28. If you need help with wiki stuff, please don’t hesitate to contact the gardeners for assistance or leave a comment to this post.)

EDIT June 23: See the revised proposal here

Comments

[kylara]

There have been some excellent suggestions in the comments here. I'm wondering if the wiki committee is planning on making another post to continue proposing/clarifying the category restructuring with the new suggestions?

I would also like some clarification on the use of "media fandom" as a category. I've only ever heard this used around Fanlore and I get the impression that it might have rather different definitions depending on use; e.g. from the Fanlore article, it seems it might be including anime/manga fandom in the sense that "media fandom" is trying to refer to fic-writing fanart-drawing vid-making side of fandom in general (which is sort of how I initially interpreted its meaning), but when it's been used in discussion around here I almost think it's intended to refer to fandoms originating in English to differentiate them from other (re: anime/manga) fandoms. Could someone please clear this up?

[rbarenblat]

Rachel here chiming in on behalf of the wiki commitee: yes, we do hope/plan to make another post for more conversation and clarification of category restructuring, but we're not quite ready yet. Thanks for your patience.

Re: media fandom -- media fandom is the corner of fandom with which I identify, and I think of it as a category which began in differentiation from science fiction fandom -- there was SF (science fiction) fandom, which centered around SF books, and then there was media fandom, which centered around television shows like Star Trek, Starsky & Hutch, Professionals, etc. I think many early media fans were SF fans, but at that point in time, the creation of fanworks like fanfiction and fanvids was frowned-on in mainstream SF fandom, whereas creating fic and vids became fairly central to mainstream media fandom.

I think the term has since broadened, colloquially, to include a variety of television and movie fandoms; there are also book fans who I think self-define as part of media fandom, maybe because they are also part of communities around tv and movie sources, or maybe because of a general commonality of fannish culture.

That said -- that's one media fan's personal and fairly idiosyncratic definition; other media fans might describe media fandom differently. (Anyone want to weigh in?)

[extempore]

At least in the area of media studies, the term "media/medium" is still debated and there is no One True Definition. I suspect, it's the same in fandom.

To me, a media fandom centers around what offen falls colloquially under "multimedia": TV, computer, movie, radio, game consoles etc. Thus, any fandom deriving from a source seen/heard/played on these machines is, in my view of things, a media fandom. Comics, manga, manwha and so on are a bit of a hybrid in this system, as they often are closely tied to a TV show.

[francescacoppa]

Right, yeah--and in fact, hilariously, this is true in the academy too. I personally think "text" is totally a kind of "media", but traditional English Lit departments often don't: they think books and media are different. So it's my understanding that in the 1970s, "media fans" broke away from literary sf fandom that was snotty about/unwelcoming to TV, film etc. the way that media studies and communication (what, books aren't communication??) broke away from English lit. So it wasn't a division between languages or even live action vs. animation--I'd say that both animation would both have been welcome in "media" fandom" --it was that tv, film, etc was not always welcome in the science fiction book fandoms that existed before (and still exist, obviously!)

[aethel]

This is my impression as well. I sometimes also think that a "media fandom" is any fandom where the majority of visible fans self-identify as media fans.