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

[naraht]

"Fandoms by Source Text" includes all fandoms that are focused on a single "text" or set of texts...

I get that this is a description of the way that things are now, but it seems odd that you're proposing keeping the same term when you're proposing to put non text-based fandoms like RPF under that heading.

Or are you? I can't quite parse this here:

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

As I consider myself fairly fandom-savvy and Wiki-savvy, I think that my confusion doesn't bode well for your plan....

ETA: Are books part of Media Fandom or not? Again, confusion...

[sqbr]

This is probably an obvious question, but: under this new categorisation, would it still be possible to create a list of all the fandoms based on books? I understand not making that the primary classification, but it's still a useful thing to know.

(On the whole I find these categorisation questions confuse me, so I don't have much to add, sorry)

[msilverstar]

I've found that this kind of hierarchical taxonomy is never perfect, and often the cause of much wank -- you should see biology taxo fights, especially with new DNA evidence.

The more you worry about evenness and consistency, the more problems. If RPF doesn't fit, make it another top-level category rather than stuffing it into something else. Balanced trees are the hobgoblin of little minds.

[facetofcathy]

I'm just throwing this out there:

Fandoms by Source Text as you have it proposed which is a page which indexes the various individual Fandom Categories.

Fandoms by Source Community as you have it proposed which is a page which indexes the various broad types of Fandoms that those source texts might be similar to, so that each sub Category is an index of similar types of Fandom Categories.

Then add:

Fandoms by Canon Type which would be a page that indexes the various types or varieties of canon sources (Live Action Television, Film, Sequential Art, Animation, Books, etc.) and each subpage is an index of similar types of Fandom Categories organized in that way.


Result: A fan who likes sequential art can look at that page and see all similar things. A fan who likes Asian-sourced fandoms can look at that page and see similar things. A fan who wants to see the list of Fandoms can go to Fandoms by Source Text and see that.

[busaikko]

Interesting. I'm wondering how this will work with fandoms that fit in more than one source community. Taking Harry Potter as an example, there are HP doujinshi (Source Community: Anime & Manga), HP filksongs (Source Community: Filk), HP vids (Source Community:??? where do vids go?), Lego HP Wii game as well as tabletop games (Source Community: Gaming), and HP film actor RPF (Source Community: RPF). Would all of these be locatable (left to right on above chart) from the Harry Potter Page?

As well, how would same-Source Community and multiple-Source Community variant canons be categorized (on the chart, moving right to left)? For an example of the first, a film remake, like old/new Karate Kid; for an example of the second, a manga series / TV anime series / animated film series (with reboots) / live-action film / etc. like Uchu Senkan Yamato, all with canons that differ to some degree. Would these all point to a main Fandom:differentiation page?

I find Source Community;Media Fandom confusing, but assume that this is already something that has been hashed out. I was surprised that it seems to contain all English-language film, television, books, music, theater, animation, and radio, but assume those would be subcategories?

[alias_sqbr]

This is less a complaint and more an alternate data point, since I realise you can't make everyone happy: not everyone who creates fanworks is part of a single coherent "community" for the relevant canon, and I have this niggling feeling that the way you've set things up could replicate the same rigid bias towards the POV of the majority within the separate subfandoms that you're trying to get rid of in the wiki as a whole. I'm not sure how you'd fix it though :/

[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?