Forms for Wikicode

[kylara]

I've been thinking about the process of documenting doujinshi on Fanlore. Not about me personally documenting it, but the documentation process in general. Every so often the topic of outreach comes up around Fanlore and the OTW, (which I think about more often then I care to admit,) and ease of use probably factors into that. Wikicode isn't difficult, but it's more work than filling out a simple form; for instance, MangaUpdates.com's "add a series" form looks like this, which is very straight-forward.

So on Monday, I got tired of bemoaning to myself the lack of a simple process for documenting doujinshi, and I made one that works for Fanlore:

Check it out!

Basically, it takes all the information in the form and converts it into basic wikicode using the Doujinshi template. It includes a descriptive first sentence and categories. I'll write a breakdown of what happens with all the info if anyone would like to see.

This is just for doujinshi. Is there any interest in things like this?


[Update] I've edited the code:
- it now includes the option for a second doujinka,
- fandoms with their own doujinshi categories now automatically get those categories included (e.g. Digimon now gets [[Category: Digimon Doujinshi]] instead of [[Category: Digimon]]),
- a link to where the doujinshi should be created is automatically generated at the bottom of the page, along with some alternate links in case the name is already taken.

There is also now a version of this form in Japanese!

Comments

[espresso_addict]

I'm not even sure what doujinshi is, but this strikes me as a very interesting notion. I've bemoaned the lack of engagement with Fanlore in multiple fora, and while there are many reasons for that, difficulty in wikicoding is definitely in there.

On the other hand, we don't want to encourage the formation of micro-stubs from people who fill in bits of a form but don't bother with anything beyond the minimum. They're appropriate for some areas but a bit annoying, IMO, for things like fandoms & characters.

[kylara]

I cringingly recall a few pages being made on Fanlore that had nothing on them but the {{Stub}} tag, or nothing but an empty template. Micro-stubs don't help anything and I wouldn't want to encourage that practice. But if someone's going to make a micro-stub, then whether or not they have a form to help them probably won't matter. The form is meant to make it easier to include information, not as an excuse to not include any.

You bring up a good point: the content that makes fandom and character pages most useful and interesting are the things that can't necessarily be neatly filled in on a form. Forms definitely have limits, and can only take a page so far.

Doujinshi are... like Japanese zines, sort of, but more commonly done in manga (comic book) style than written text. Like zines, they're part of Fanlore's Pokemon project, i.e. "We must document them all!" The information for them can be pretty basic, so it wasn't difficult to think up a useful form for them.

[espresso_addict]

If doujinshi are a type of single-author zine then the form approach seems to make a lot of sense for them. I'd just be ... cautious ... of applying the method too widely. We don't want to get like fanhistory.com!

In my experience, there's still quite a few pages with just a partially filled-in template or a bunch of headings and no text. I'm never sure whether they're more off-putting or encouraging to contributors. Personally I hate 'em, but a newbie to wikicoding might find the idea of putting an example under an existing heading much less scary than creating the page de novo.

[hl]

Wow, it looks awesome. I don't know anything about doujinshi and I don't make new pages very often (or really with any kind of... regularity. I did about four all told and haven't found the time to keep documenting my chosen fandom) but it looks very cool and it seems to me that it would make the process really easier.

[kylara]

Thanks, I hope it does make it easier for others. I haven't made many new pages recently, although I suppose it's time for me to start again.

[onceamy]

This looks awesome! It's always great to see people inspired to hook things up to Fanlore, which as you said, encourages diversity in content.

[kylara]

Thanks! For doujinshi in particular, there's a massive amount out there that I'd love to see documented.

What other things have there been hooked up to Fanlore?

[onceamy]

Not a lot! We have a Firefox search button, and our API is open for registered users with the appropriate permissions (which can be obtained by request to wiki@transformativeworks.org) for bots :)

[mrkinch]

Wow! Would I really be able to document my Gundam Wing doujinshi at Fanlore? That would be fantastic. I should get rid of my collection eventually but I would love to have it documented somewhere besides my website.

[franzeska]

Sure, why not? (She says totally unofficially...)

I mean, Fanlore is aiming to document all zines, right? Why not all doujinshi?

[kylara]

I'd love for you to document all your doujinshi on Fanlore. As Franzeska says, Fanlore is aiming to document all zines and doujinshi. Or at least all zines, but I see no reason why doujinshi would be left out. I also speak entirely unofficially.

Would you link me to your website? I love doujinshi, and I like seeing how others document them. I've made a few attempts at documenting my own, with varying degrees of success. Fanlore is probably a better space for it, and I hope to document my stuff there eventually. I look at my collection of doujinshi and, when it comes to documenting, something inside me slinks away at all that work. Part of the reason I made the form was for myself, to get me moving on it. Hopefully the form helps other collectors too!

If you end up using the form, let me know how it goes? I'm very open to suggestions for it.

[mrkinch]

dj obsession is my old, rather rudimentary site. It's been dormant for some time; I only go there occasionally to clear out dead external links. Most of the relevant information is at the site, but I do still have all the books.

[lucyp]

This looks great! I think it might actually encourage people to be more thorough in what they include - there's somethig about filling in a firm that makes people want to use all the fields. And as a hater of wiki markup, I would definitely find this less annoying to use!

[kylara]

That's exactly how I feel about forms, and I hope these would encourage more content on new pages. I don't hate wiki markup at all, but forms are definitely easier and more straight-forward.

[morgandawn]

I love this because it may help people get over the initial "what's a wiki code" hurdle. It would be wonderful to have a template for bio pages (I find that having people start with their own biographies is a good way to get them involved).

And then perhaps have one for zines or fanworks.

In short...awesome idea.

I am going to do a test on a Supernatural doujinshi I have.

[morgandawn]

Here is my first test run
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Say_You_Love_Me

I had to manually add the supernatural doujinshi category, but it was very easy.

[morgandawn]

and the second
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Afterwards_(Supernatural_doujinshi)

Is there a way to add the general doujinshi category to the template? I am not up to speed on categories so don;t know the hierarchies.

[kylara]

Bio pages are a great places to start, thanks for the suggestion! That hadn't occurred to me, but I agree that a user's own bio page is probably the best place to get beginners started.

Your tests turned out pretty nice. Upon looking into it, I'm sure I can get the form to automatically add special categories such as "Supernatural Doujinshi" (and "Digimon Doujinshi," and "Final Fantasy Doujinshi," etc.) I might even be able to remove categories in the hierarchy, such as removing [[Category: Supernatural]] when [[Category: Supernatural Doujinshi]] is added. I'll look into it more!

[[Category: Doujinshi]] is already automatically added to pages using the doujinshi template. Is that what you mean about adding the general doujinshi category?

[kylara]

I've updated the code that creates categories. For Digimon, Final Fantasy, LOTR, Star Wars TPM, and Supernatural, (which all have their own doujinshi categories listed here,) inputting any of those into any of the Fandom sections adds their special doujinshi categories instead of their regular categories.

E.g. putting "Supernatural" in as a Fandom now adds [[Category: Supernatural Doujinshi]] instead of [[Category: Supernatural]].

I vaguely recall seeing doujinshi for some other fandoms being added to special zine categories for their fandoms, but I'm not sure where that's happening so I haven't added any of those.

[franzeska]

Neat! I'm perfectly comfortable with wiki markup, and I still find it way easier to fill out a form when I'm doing template-y things. It's just so easy to mess up that formatting.

[kylara]

I feel the same way. I'm just fine working with wiki markup, but I think there's something a bit tedious about filling in a template. Filling in a form isn't as tedious, perhaps because I can tab through it and it just looks neater.

[aethel]

this is amazing!

On a related note, I've been wondering if we need more doujinshi templates or categories. We have so many for zines, but only one for doujinshi.

[kylara]

I've wondered a bit about categories and templates too, but I think the current doujinshi template works well for various types of doujinshi. (Although the form I made for it wouldn't work very well for anthologies, since it currently allows for only one doujinka name. I should expand that a bit. But the template itself is fine.)

There are a few fanlore pages for circles and doujinka, so [[Category: Doujinshi Circles & Doujinka]] would be awesome.

I can think of a few categories that would be nice for future use, but I'm not sure if there are enough of those types of doujinshi yet. Is there a minimum requirement of pages for creating categories?

[frogspace.livejournal.com]

Is there a minimum requirement of pages for creating categories?

As far as I remember it's 15 pages or files.

[aethel]

Since we have a template for doujinshi circles, we can easily create a category for this.

http://fanlore.org/wiki/Template:DoujinshiCircle

I changed the category associated with the template, but I haven't created the category yet. Does it look good? So far only six pages use the template, but I'm sure there will be more.

[kylara]

I really like the new category! It looks good to me.

[extempore]

Anything that lowers the barrier of posting to Fanlore is a good thing in my opinion. =) As you said, if someone wants to create a stub, they will do it no matter what. This way there is actually some overall structure in the code. (And I do think that a stub is more inviting to add content than a non-existent page.)

Speaking as someone who simply doesn't want to invest heaps of time in looking up Wiki codes and text templates over and over again, because I simply can't remember them, a premade graphical template where I don't have to look for appropriate places inbetween the code to put my information, is quite perfect. I wish, more UIs like this could be done for Fanlore as working with pure code is a pretty certain death of motivation for a lot of people, who just wanted to share some of their fandom love quickly.

On a side note (and I hope this is an appropriate place to discuss it), I just took a quick peek at the DJ page and category on FL and I wonder, if we could organize it a bit better. Currently we have the doujinshi page, a DJ category, a few DJ subcategories and many single pages. But, for example, the subcategories are missing some fandoms which are already represented with DJ examples on FL, like Harry Potter. I'm not sure, if it wouldn't be better to create a "list of doujinshi fandoms" page to provide a better index/overview. This page could then link to the individual lists for fandoms. Perhaps I'll tackle the DJ page and sort out the mix-up of circles and DJ fandoms. Hm... (See, that template of yours already motivated me to work on FL again! \o/)

[extempore]

Oh, I just realized that there is no pairing category in the template. Most people I know usually go for specific pairings or at least would like to have that information when looking at a DJ.

[lian]

This is a thing of beauty and you should feel proud. (I feel proud! The Japanese version especially makes me go misty-eyed.) Signal-boosting!

[unjapanologist]

Blundering in via lian with a more general question about documenting dojinshi on Fanlore (the template looks pretty damn awesome). I was wondering, have any Japanese fans expressed their opinion about information on their works ending up on this large, search engine-friendly site? And are there any guidelines for how much information should be included in entries about dojinshi, or rules about linking to circles' homepages?

The idea of putting details on specific dojinshi on Fanlore makes me think a bit because many Japanese fans used to be (and sometimes still are) very leery about putting any sort of information about their works somewhere where random people could stumble across it. Some still hide their circle's website from search engines etc. so that only people who bought a dojinshi and are thus definitely "in the know" about dojinshi culture could find the site's URL. People on the Japanese internet tend to be a lot more privacy-conscious than people on the English-language net, and fans even more so.

Of course fandom is becoming more visible in Japan as well, and the many people who now have their home base on sites like Pixiv are clearly less concerned about getting discovered. But I'm not convinced if that means people wouldn't instinctively frown upon a large, easily-found, and non-Japanese website apparently collecting information on individual dojinshi. Not sure about the situation right now, but I remember some Japanese manga/anime fans being extremely unhappy with the way English-language sites used scans and screenshots seemingly willy-nilly and linked to everything without asking. It was normal practice on the English-language net, but not done on the Japanese. Not that either the English- or Japanese-language net should have changed its practices, but there was an undeniable clash of values there.

NB, I'm not Japanese and only lurk in Japanese fandom, so I absolutely don't mean to speak for any people there. It's just that Fanlore doesn't seem to be known among Japanese fans right now. I have this vague concern that if someone who's very keen on hiding from search engines finds a Fanlore page for their dojinshi, Fanlore might end up getting the kind of reputation among Japanese fans that FH has over here. Given the OTW's international outreach goals, the idea of Fanlore getting tagged with the label of "yet another clueless foreigner-run site that may be cavalier about our information, avoid avoid" bothers me. I'm really curious what Japanese dojinshi authors think of Fanlore.

Please correct me if these concerns are unfounded. I'd really much prefer to talk about my dojinshi collection on Fanlore ;)

[frogspace.livejournal.com]

I was wondering, have any Japanese fans expressed their opinion about information on their works ending up on this large, search engine-friendly site?

I know of one fan who was surprised to find some of her doujinshi on Fanlore but she didn't seem unhappy about it. She asked a few questions about the wiki and then added missing information to the doujinshi pages, made pages for her other doujinshi and uploaded the covers herself.

The first doujinshi pages on Fanlore were added as part of the zine project (Lord of the Rings doujinshi, Star Wars doujinshi, etc.), meaning they were already listed on public zine pages and other public sites such as ebay. Maybe with these doujinshi the question never came up?

Fanlore has privacy policies and is currently working on clarifying these policies with regard to images (for example for artists who don't want to have their name connected to explicit fanart, etc.). Someone having concerns about their own privacy because of something on Fanlore can contact the wiki committee about that.

[unjapanologist]

Thanks, it's really good to hear that that fan wasn't concerned. I think/hope that most would equally supportive if they find all the info they need about the wiki and its purpose.

Fanlore has privacy policies and is currently working on clarifying these policies with regard to images (for example for artists who don't want to have their name connected to explicit fanart, etc.). Someone having concerns about their own privacy because of something on Fanlore can contact the wiki committee about that.

Sounds excellent. Maybe we could make a Japanese translation of that privacy policy? To be honest, in the event that a Japanese fan sees Fanlore and does feel worried for any reason, I'd be very surprised if they tried to contact the committee for clarification. The English would be a huge hurdle for a lot of people. It's not a language that most here are comfortable using, or even reading in. An easily findable Japanese text that explains Fanlore's privacy policy and specifically addresses Japanese fanworks could dispel most or all concerns at once. (I could try to arrange a translation of the clarified policy once it's finished, if wiki people think it's a good idea.)

[frogspace.livejournal.com]

in the event that a Japanese fan sees Fanlore and does feel worried for any reason, I'd be very surprised if they tried to contact the committee for clarification.

Good point.

Maybe we could make a Japanese translation of that privacy policy?

I think that's a good idea. If someone then contacts the wiki committee, it shouldn't be too difficult to find someone from the translations committee or another volunteer who speaks Japanese to help with the request. :)

(I could try to arrange a translation of the clarified policy once it's finished, if wiki people think it's a good idea.)

As resources are always limited, I'm sure help with the translation would be greatly appreciated! I'll suggest your idea and let you know when the policy update is finished (speaking as a very new to the job wiki person). I'm pretty sure it will be posted to this community.

[unjapanologist]

If someone then contacts the wiki committee, it shouldn't be too difficult to find someone from the translations committee or another volunteer who speaks Japanese to help with the request. :)

It may be very reassuring in and of itself if there's an option for Japanese interaction. Great! Yes, please give me a poke when the update is finished, just in case I miss the announcement here.