committee post: Category Proposal II

[aethel]

Thank you to everyone who gave us feedback on the category proposal from May 21. As suggested by facetofcathy and others, here's a further revision to that proposal:

Instead of deleting the format categories that currently reside under Fandoms by Source Text, we will move them under another parent category we will create called _Fandoms by Canon Type_. The fandom categories will look something like this:




[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 "Anime & Manga". These in turn also link to individual fandom categories, e.g. "Media Fandom" leads to "Blake’s 7" and "Harry Potter" while "K-Drama" leads to "Coffee Prince". A third parent category, "Fandoms by Canon Type", contains format subcategories like "Books & Literature" and "Film", which in turn link to the fandom categories under "Fandoms by Source Text".]

"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. "Fandoms by Community" lists larger fannish communities that don’t correspond neatly to a single canon text (like Media Fandom, Anime & Manga Fandom, Filk, Vidding, J-pop, etc.).

Here's a graphic depicting the current state of the categories:



[ 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. ]

Summary of changes:
* Rename "Fandoms by Source Community" to "Fandoms by Community"
* Rename "Fandoms by Source Text" to "Fandoms"?
* Move to "Fandoms by Canon Type": Books & Literature, Film, Games, Radio, Real People, Television, Theater
* Move to "Fandoms by Community": Comics
* Create: Sequential Art & Animation, Anime & Manga

This way, everyone can choose how to browse or search for what they want--people interested in all pages about fandoms which arise out of books (for example) can look under Fandoms by Canon Type, people interested in K-drama can look under Fandoms by Community, and people who want to see everything at once can look under Fandoms by Source Text. And fans can still make more fandom categories as needed, but categories under Fandoms by Canon Type would remain fairly stable.

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

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

Category:Fandoms by Canon Type
...Category:Books & Literature
......Category:Harry Potter
.........Harry Potter (the page)

So the page "Harry Potter" would get the Harry Potter category and no other category. Meanwhile, the Harry Potter category would be cross-linked under "Fandoms by Source Text", "Books & Literature", and potentially "Media Fandom".

And:

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

Category:Fandoms by Canon Type
...Category:Sequential Art & Animation
......Homestuck (the page)


The page “Homestuck” would get the Fandoms by Source Text and Sequential Art & Animation categories because there is no “Homestuck” category yet.

And:

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

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

Category:Fandoms by Canon Type
...Category:Sequential Art & Animation
......Category:Naruto
.........Naruto (the page)

The page “Naruto” would get the Naruto category.

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We welcome discussion, comments, and feedback.

Comments

[kylara]

I like this generally, and I feel that I understand it enough to use it. But I share some of the concerns expressed in above comments for some of the details, and have some new ones.

- "Sequential Art & Animation" should be separated. They are distinct concepts/mediums, to me they're even more distinct than live-action TV and Film are to each other, and they would be more useful separated.

- Under "Sequential Art" have the "Manga" subcategory, and under "Animation" have the "Anime" subcategory.

- From the way it's being used as a fandom community, it sounds as though "Comics" fandom should be "Comic Books" instead. Then it's not confused with webcomics and others. But that might come into conflict with a possible "comic books" subcategory for "Sequential Art", which leads to the next point.

- Perhaps the potentially-confusing fandom community categories should be named with "fandom" attached to make them distinct from canon types, such as "Comic Book fandom", "Anime & Manga fandom", "K-Drama fandom", etc.

- Real People: I feel this could become a source of confusion with the alternative categories for real people who aren't generally considered canon types, e.g. fans, academics such as Henry Jenkins and Susan Napier, and fandom villains like Ogi Ogas. I'm not sure what to suggest, but maybe "Celebrities" or "Celebrities & Real People", to keep it distinct from academics and others?

- "Television" -> "Live Action Television", and "Films" -> "Live Action Films". I understand why you'd want to exclude animation from the already-large TV and Film categories, but it's also annoying that animated (and anime) shows/films are shoved off with the implication they're somehow not worthy because they're animated. This touches on a sore spot for fans of anime and cartoons. By defining TV and Films as live action, that's no longer such a problem or a source of confusion.

- Instead of listing the whole fandom category (e.g. [[Category: Harry Potter]]) under canon types, how about just list the fandom page (e.g. [[Harry Potter]] the page)? If I'm browsing under "Books & Literature" and come across Harry Potter, I don't want to go through the whole Harry Potter category to find and click on the Harry Potter page. The entire Harry Potter category isn't a canon type, so it seems misplaced in there. Then "Books & Literature" (and other canon sources) remains a list of just that.

So instead of this:
Category:Fandoms by Canon Type
...Category:Books & Literature
......Category:Harry Potter
.........Harry Potter (the page)

It's this:
Category:Fandoms by Canon Type
...Category:Books & Literature
......Harry Potter (the page)

Then the Harry Potter page gets both the categories of "Books & Literature" as well as "Harry Potter".

And with this idea combined with the first/second one, instead of this:

Category:Fandoms by Canon Type
...Category:Sequential Art & Animation
......Category:Naruto
.........Naruto (the page)

It's these:

Category:Fandoms by Canon Type
...Category:Sequential Art
......Category:Manga
.........Naruto (the page)

Category:Fandoms by Canon Type
...Category:Animation
......Category:Anime
.........Naruto (the page)

The Naruto page gets [[Category:Naruto]], [[Category:Anime]], and [[Category:Manga]].

This only applies to categories of canon type. For categories by fandom community, keep the [[Category:Naruto]] under [[Cateogry:Anime & Manga fandom]].

So yes, my thoughts, there they are.

[lian]

- "Sequential Art & Animation" should be separated. They are distinct concepts/mediums, to me they're even more distinct than live-action TV and Film are to each other, and they would be more useful separated.


You know, I think you're right -- I just realized we're falling into the trap of thinking of fandom (like, Anime & Manga fandom which spans canon types) when the category in question is about canon/media type, instead.

ETA: ppl have totally used Ogi Ogas as canon, though -- I recall at least one tentacle rape fic. :> ...but yeah, in general, I take your point, just pointing out the categories are rather...permeable. (good thing there's multicategorizing!)

[kylara]

Thank you, although I think what's going on is a bit different. From my position, it looks like non-animation/comics/etc.-fans aren't used to thinking about animated and drawn mediums, so the categories end up lumped together out of ignorance (or a "they're all the same" mentality). These media are also being removed from equally relevant categories (e.g. TV, film, books & lit) as though the live-action common to media fandom is the not-needing-to-be-stated definition, the non-differentiated norm, so everything else is other and excluded.

For clarification, I recognize the usefulness of putting animated films and shows under a separate animation category, and in the interest of keeping the categories useful I support it. But this permeating idea that TV and films are inherently live-action and their categories require no special definition to justify removing animation is a bit frustrating. It's part of a pattern of behavior/ideas/attitudes that keeps excluding my fandoms.

After hearing references above to the AO3, I went and checked out the categories there. I see that "Cartoons" are inexplicably combined with "Comics & Graphic Novels" over there. Without the reasons for that I can only guess why, but it looks like another case of outsider-not-seeing-differences in the OTW. That's in addition to the term used being "Cartoons" instead of "Animation", which is another annoyance.

Sorry, I've spilled my tl;dr thoughts all over you. Here, have a towel.

ppl have totally used Ogi Ogas as canon, though -- I recall at least one tentacle rape fic

I totally read that fic too. :) There was also at least one manip/fanart and some filk, but I still wouldn't think of him as a canon type. I don't expect the categories to be perfect either, just generally useful and not working under the same thought processes that have caused so many problems of inclusion up to now.

[aethel]

Hi! Sorry about the delayed response. I like most of these changes and forwarded them to the committee--so far no objections. There are a couple of items I'm ambivalent about:
1.
> - Under "Sequential Art" have the "Manga" subcategory, and under "Animation" have the "Anime" subcategory.

Given your plan to categorize fandom pages instead of fandom categories under Canon Types, this would actually be very easy to implement since we've already got the Anime and Manga categories. However, I think it will look a little weird if they are the only subcategories. Can we add other country/region/continent subcategories? Like, do we want a "U.S. Comics & Graphic Novels" category? Admittedly, there's only 27 pages in the current Comics category, and some of them are not actually fandoms. http://fanlore.org/wiki/Category:Comics

Doro also proposed something upthread that appeals to me--have overlapping categories so everyone can have the categories they find useful. All sequential art goes in "Sequential Art", all comics from Japan go in Manga, etc. (If we did this, we would definitely need a U.S. Comics category as well) I made a little diagram of the result:



Existing categories in white, new categories in pink, renamed Real People category in light pink.

2.
I'm also not sure about the naming of the comics fandom category. Do comics fans call it "Comic Book Fandom"? "Comics Fandom", "Comic Book Fandom", a disambiguation along the lines of "Comics Fandom (U.S.?? comic books)" or whatever is fine by me as long as comics fans actually call it that.

3. There is no 3.

(BTW, I changed the "Science Fiction" category to read "Science Fiction Fandom"... and then I realized maybe it should be called "Science Fiction & Fantasy Fandom"??)

ETA: To clarify, if we adopt all your changes and start doing stuff on the actual wiki today, I would be delighted! (I don't think we can do it today, though; I have to go check....) I think point #1 above would be easy to fix later on.

[kylara]

Can we add other country/region/continent subcategories? Like, do we want a "U.S. Comics & Graphic Novels" category?

That sounds fantastic. I was under the impression we'd have subcategories when any group/set/selection gets big enough, which is how I thought categories were working anyway? And optimistically we'll have many anime and manga entries, so we still have use for those categories.

For these "overlapping" categories, just so I understand: canon type and fandom community wouldn't be separated anymore? I'll read through Doro's thread more thoroughly tomorrow, but I'd like to have a better idea how this would work. Just looking at the diagram, it seems redundant for anime and manga (and potentially other sub-categories) to be listed twice, as both top level and sub-categories.


Do comics fans call it "Comic Book Fandom"?

Good question; I personally don't really know! And I don't want to inflict titles on others. It looked to me like a descriptive term rather than an identity, which is why I suggested it, but I should've checked on that before saying anything. According to Google, "comics fandom" has 64,400 results; "comic book fandom" has 114,000 results. There is also apparently a "Father of Comic Book Fandom" Jerry Bails, so it seems the term has been in use for a while. All I know is what Google tells me.


3. There is no 3.

You can't fool me! Where has the cabal hidden it?! ;)


maybe it should be called "Science Fiction & Fantasy Fandom"??

That sounds good to me, but as with comic book fandom I'm not sure if that's intended as a description or an identity. Maybe ask the community?

At this point, I think the category proposal is ready to be implemented? Details can be tweaked along the way of course. Although I'm still not sure about the overlapping category suggestion; will re-read at normal hours, it might compute then.