paraka: A baby wearing headphones and holding a mic (Default)
paraka ([personal profile] paraka) wrote in [community profile] fanlore2012-09-21 03:24 pm

Podfic Entries

I've been trying to add more entries to Fanlore about podfic and have run into a bit of an issue. When I was creating new pages I was titling them "Title (podfic)" to help distinguish that this was an entry about the podfic not about the fic, which normally has the same title.

The problem though, is that this goes against current Fanlore policies to only add an honourific to an entry if there's a conflicting entry of the same name and there's a need to disambiguate. So the gardeners, rightly, were changing the names of the pages I created to remove the honourific.

And while I totally understand the reason for the policy, it still made me nervous because without the (podfic) in the title it just wasn't as clear that the entry was a podfic entry. Sure enough, one of the entries I made was later edited in a way to make it seem more like a fic entry (it's since been changed back and with other additions).

So I'd like to have a conversation about what we can do to make sure that podfic entries are welcomed on Fanlore and that future editors, trying to be helpful but not aware that the entry is a podfic entry, won't end up morphing the entries into fic entries. I've spoken to some individual podficcers about this as well as some of the Fanlore gardeners, and here's some of the suggestions we've come up with so far:

[personal profile] klb suggested that one way to deal with it is to include "podfic" in the title, but not as an honourific. So "Title podfic" would be how the pages are named. Most of the time, in fannish day-to-day conversations, people will often specify when they're talking about a podfic if the context of the situation doesn't already imply it. And when you look at places like AO3 or general fandom comms, many podficcers add that sort of distinction when they post their work. So adding "podfic" to the title does reflect podfic fandom today.

Sparcicle suggested that we add a note to the top of podfic pages saying "This page is about the podfic. For the story, see Title (story)."
This will give an immediate visual clue to those viewing the page that this is a page for the podfic and gives them a link to the fic page (or the opportunity to create a page for the fic if it doesn't already exist, as it won't in most cases).

There was some debate in the talk page where this was brought up that (story) is perhaps not the correct honourific and, while I'm throwing my 2 cents in, I'd like to say that I'd prefer to see the fic getting an honourific like (fanfic) instead, since the podfic is a story too (as are vids and comics and many other fanarts). In fact, what the fic and podfic share is the story, what we need to disambiguate is which medium the story is being told in.

[personal profile] aethel suggested adding a grey banner to the infobox to make it clearer that the template is a podfic template.

Personally, I think I like options 2 and 3 together best, but I thought I'd ask others how they feel before I start creating a bunch more pages. And please feel free to add more suggestions!
morgandawn: (Default)

[personal profile] morgandawn 2012-09-21 08:21 pm (UTC)(link)
I think there are two templates - one for fan fiction and one for podfic. they have their own category trees - just like vids and zines. I know that podfics stand at an interesting and unusual intersection in that they're intertwined (the fanfic and podfic), but the general consensus is that they're different enough to warrant two templates and seperate categories. There is precedence for this in the zine world where we document the audio cassette recordings from the zines.

That's not to say we cannot discuss why they're considered different, just to explain why we don't, under the current templates, lump them together on the same page.
ratcreature: RL? What RL? RatCreature is a net addict.  (what rl?)

[personal profile] ratcreature 2012-09-21 08:34 pm (UTC)(link)
So you can't put two templates on one page in different sections without breaking the page? I agree that they should be in both category trees, I just don't see why two pages are needed unless there is a lot of content so that splitting makes it more readable.
ext_3626: (Default)

[identity profile] frogspace.livejournal.com 2012-09-21 08:54 pm (UTC)(link)
You can put more than one template on a page without breaking anything, we just don't do it and stick to one template per page.
ratcreature: RatCreature is thinking: hmm...? (hmm...?)

[personal profile] ratcreature 2012-09-21 09:10 pm (UTC)(link)
Why? To me it seems really forced to insist on separate pages for fic and podfic, and stress that a later editor absolutely has to put the fanfic info on its own page with notices, and can't just add it in a new section to the podfic page, when the combined wouldn't be so long as to be cumbersome. Having a second template would IMO be an easy way to give podfic (and maybe other fanworks a fic inspired) enough weight to not become an afterthought, but still make adding all aspects and incarnations of a story to one page overview possible.
ext_3626: (merlin - dragon spell)

[identity profile] frogspace.livejournal.com 2012-09-21 08:52 pm (UTC)(link)
Actually, there are quite a lot fanlore pages with the fanfic and the podfic on the same page. Also, there are quite a lot zine pages with a popular netfic and a later published zine on the same page too. Not to say that they couldn't have separate pages but to say that we never put it on the same page isn't correct either.
morgandawn: (Default)

[personal profile] morgandawn 2012-09-21 09:07 pm (UTC)(link)
frogspace is correct - podfics and 'fic on tape' audio cassette recordings have been handled in a wide variety of ways on fanlore. The podfic templates are relatively new - I know when I was adding fan fiction pages last year I had to include the podfic on the fiction page. We tend to add templates as needed - ex. The vid template was added when someone said - "hey, let's make an entry for that." and someone said "great idea". Up until then vids were mainly discussed on convention or Vidder profile pages.