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

[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.