fanlore | Podfic Entries

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:

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.

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!

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I agree with your reasons for "fanfic" rather than "story", and a note at the top of the page sounds good, along with podfic in the title where that makes sense or sounds natural.

I totally agree that the honourific for a fic should not be "story", for exactly your reasons.
Adding a disambiguation line sounds like a good idea!

I don't edit anymore, but as a reader, is there any reason not to conveniently put both on the same page at first, in different sections, both with a template, to indicate both are equally welcome and important? Sure, the podfic work shouldn't become subsumed under the original fanfic, like a mere appendix, but it's not like they don't have anything to do with each other either, and you could always separate and disambiguate, when the page gets too long and there is a ton of extra info on either the fanfic or the podfic, so one would overwhelm the other. I mean, fanart that was inspired by fanfic is almost always put on the same page as the fanfic, not with extra pages for every piece of art.

I like options 2 and 3 as well. I'd prefer story (mainly because we're seeing different types of spellings for fanfiction, FanFiction, or fanfic), but either would work for me). If we go for fanfiction I'd suggest we use the full word fanfiction and not fabric.

edited to say - the honor-ific to be added to the podfic page if/when the second fan fiction page is created. In its absence I'd add the 'header' with a red link pointer to the placeholder page for the fanfic page (story or fan fiction -either way). Tweaking the template to automatically include a grey banner would be a simple visual fix.

Edited (clarifyinf) 2012-09-21 21:18 (UTC)

For reference, some talk pages with discussions relevant to this topic:
Talk:This Never Happened
Talk:Trying to Communicate
Template talk:Podfic

I like

aethel´s idea best: I think it´s clear enough, but still flexible. Option 2 would also make it clear, but implies a separate page for the fic, which may not always exist. 1 also seems easier: we´d only have to change the template once, but for option 2 editors would have to add a header each time. Editors could still use a header like this if they want to/think there should be a page for the fic, but I wouldn´t make it a general suggestion for every podfic page.

For disambiguation I prefer "xxx (fanfiction)".

I like #3, putting (fanfic) or (fanfiction) in the title of those pages. They often have ambiguous titles, like "Convergence", and it's nice to be clearer up front. It's also good for search engine results, people can tell what they're going to see when they click.

Note: I am getting on a plane to go on vacation in less than 12 hours (eep) so please understand that I might not be able to give responses to this comment, but these are some thoughts that I had sent earlier in response to Paraka's last email to the gardeners list.

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.

I really like this suggestion! And I'm sort of facepalming that we didn't think of it. I think as an actual gardener (but not a committee member)-- just personally speaking, I often fall into the trap of "but this is the rule so we must do it this way, and everything must be the same, in order to be organized and not confusing" but as aethel pointed out, fandom is a big place and we should ideally be responding with flexibility in order to reflect how people are actually doing things, even if it doesn't fit perfectly into some theoretical idea of what things *should* look like.

And also as a wiki contributor I tend to think of what will be best in the long term for much larger groups of future wiki participants-- so my priority is generally simpler procedures for creating pages, the same processes for every fanwork, etc., and then I sort of forget, "oh yeah, people will also just be USING the wiki, like, to look things up and find information, duh." And using "Title Of Story Podfic" would be best in that case as well, as Paraka also points out, because it seems to me that's how people would *search* for the podfic page, if they were looking for it-- they'd search for "Such And Such Podfic".

And then as klb points out, podfic is also special case compared to other currently existing types of fanworks, in that generally, disambiguation is usually only needed in the case of a very short generic title like "Alone" or "Masks", or if it's a very common fandom injoke/reference like (this is just a made up example) "Me and Thee" in Starsky & Hutch fandom, where that's the name of a zine and an archive and a mailing list and a couple of stories and also someone's pseud and so on, and those can usually be worked out by the "first come first served" rule and by creating disambiguation pages not automatically, but mostly only as needed.

But a podfic 95% of the time will have the same title as a text fic, so the page creation guidelines should probably reflect that podfic titling conventions are different than other types of fanwork titling conventions.

So, my general priority would still be that the shortest/simplest title & shortest/simplest page creation system is best, but I think in this case I've come around to the idea that the shortest/simplest system for podfic pages *should* include the info that the work is a podfic. It's less confusing and also it's less challenging for the casual wiki editor than creating disambiguation pages.

I'm not sure yet about whether it should be "Title of Story Podfic" or "Title of Story (podfic)." The second way looks neater, I think, but it might confuse the casual wiki editor into thinking that they would always need to put (vid) or (zine) other details in the title of a page, and also I worry about offending people if we say "No, that rule is just for podfic," "Well, why are there special rules just for podfic!"

These are really just minor concerns though, I guess I don't have a strong preference either way.

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.

Right, different mediums are also stories, but a story in zine format is labeled "zine," in audio format "podfic" and then in text format, currently, "story."

But the problem is, there's not that much difference between "story" and "fanfic," I don't think-- in the sense that they are both umbrella terms and literally both mean more than just "text based internet fan fiction." I mean, a zine is fanfic, a podfic is fanfic, a fan comic is fanfic. If we changed to "fanfic" to indicate the internet text version of a story, wouldn't we equally be saying "these works aren't really fanfic?"

I mean, "story" is inexact, but I don't know if there is a more exact term that is actually, currently in active use in fandom, to mean just an internet-posted text-based story and not stories in other mediums.

The only one that I can think of that has actually been commonly used in fandom would be back in the day when people used "zinefic" and "netfic" to distinguish between those two media types, but I don't think we'd have much luck trying to get people to use "netfic" now.

And this is where we get into the issue that Fanlore is (ideally) descriptive, not prescriptive, meaning, in this case, that we would prioritize using the terms that are already *being* used, and not be like an anthropologist and say "We've decided to label this sort of thing 'textfic' even though nobody in fandom actually uses that term."

Anyway. I don't think I was around when "story" was chosen, but I always assumed that the thought process there was "how easy is this going to be for large groups of people in the long run, including lots of casual editors," and using "fanfic" instead of "story" opens up all those variations of spelling, as someone pointed out on one of the talk page discussions-- now you're not just having problems with non-standardized labeling like "TS fic" and "Sentinel fic" and "The Sentinel fic," -- now you're adding a whole new problem point where people are creating duplicate pages/making unsuccessful searches because there is the ambiguity of "fic," "fanfic," "fan fic," "fan fiction," "fanfiction," etc. So in that sense, "story" has an advantage just because it's harder to mess up.

Edited 2012-09-22 01:04 (UTC)

I´m copying part of an email

aethel sent to the gardeners list a few days ago that I think has good points (because she´s on vacation and I don´t know when she´ll have the time to do it herself):

"The current practice of not disambiguating page names until there's more than one page with the same name has two practical considerations:

1. our search function is not the greatest. if the page is disambiguated, but there's no un-ambiguated version, it's harder to reach the page.

2. if the page is disambiguated, but there's no un-ambiguated version, someone is more likely to create a duplicate entry for the same concept. And then no one will be able to find the original page because they will automatically be sent to the un-ambiguated one when they type the page name into the search bar and hit Enter.

Of course, we could solve these issues by creating the basic name [[Podfic Title]] and redirecting it to the disambiguated version [[Podfic Title (podfic)]], but that is an extra step we would need to remember every time a podfic page is created. Livia makes a good point about not privileging one fanwork type over another. We don't add qualifiers to page names for any other type of fanwork either, so adding the (podfic) could seem like saying Fanlore doesn't think podfic is a real fanwork. And we do think it is a real and valuable type of fanwork! On the other hand, if podficcers themselves think podfic pages need to have the (podfic) in the title, maybe that's a good enough reason to include it. PPOV in action?"

Fanlore naming conventions say: "Articles about individual fanworks should include only the work's title in the page name". That's the rule for all fanwork pages. Sadly, technical reason's dictate that every page must have a unique title and that's where disambiguation comes in.

It's not a honorific (at least not the way I understand it? The dictionary tells me it means "giving or expressing honor or respect"; is there another meaning I'm missing as an EFL speaker?), it's a way to make it possible for several pages with exactly the same name to exist on Fanlore. If the name is not exactly the same (the 24 Hours/24 HOURS example I gave you on one of the talk pages), there is no need for disambiguation in the title of a page. That said, if there is going to be a separate page about a podfic as a fanwork, the naming of the page should follow the naming rules for all fanwork pages, otherwise the treatment of podfic on Fanlore would be not equal to the treatment of other fanworks (see for example Break Like Time: The Fifth Column, a page about a fic trailer for the story of the same name which doesn't have a Fanlore page) and therefore send the message that podfic is not equal. Also, it wouldn't be practical because it means editors would be expected to know that there are different rules for podfic pages than for all other pages, which increases the risk of breaking some editing rules without meaning to.

Adding the word "Podfic" to the name of a podfic, if that's not how the podfic creator named it to begin with, would be forcing a different name on the work and it would set precedent for that kind of approach for other fanwork pages. Forcing a different name on a fanwork is generally something Fanlore doesn't do and I think it's something we really should avoid. (However, if it became general practice for podficcers to include "Podfic" in the name of the podfic it would be part of the page title but so far I haven't seen that practice in naming podfics; the name is easy to find out by checking the entry where the podfic was posted and by checking the cover associated with it.)

Adding a disambiguation line makes sense when there already is a page for the fic, although I would hope it would already be wikilinked in the "Based On" field in the template or in the text of the page. Always adding a disambiguation line with a redlinked non-existing page would suggest that for every podfic page to exist, there would also need to be a corresponding fic page. On the one hand, that's not true, on the other hand, it would elevate the fic page to a higher importance than the podfic page while at the same time marking the podfic as a lesser fanwork that is always in need of the disclaimer that it's not something else.

Frankly, that seems like overkill to me. What's the worse that could happen? Some other editor feels inspired to add more information! That's a good thing. So what if it's about the fic? It's still new information that wasn't there before. Success! What to do with that information is part of what gardeners and other editors are there for. Maybe it should be moved to a separate page. Maybe it should both be on the same page. Maybe it's wrong and needs to be removed. Maybe it should be reworded and moved to a different section. Maybe there need to be new templates for pages that combine more than one fanwork. Maybe one or the other template works fine, depending on the examples in question. These discussions happen on the talk pages of the respective articles. Fanlore articles aren't static. They change over time and they change a lot. Someone adding something in a way you think is wrong? Completely normal and exactly what drives the growths and changes of an article, because everything can be corrected. Also, making mistakes is normal when editing a wiki, especially for new editors, and an essential part of the learning curve when editing a wiki. There is no rule that won't be broken repeatedly by several people. Basing decisions only on the fear that someone might make a mistake is not a good basis for making decisions about wiki editing rules.

Even if we go by the assumption that it was not a mistake and instead the edit of someone who thought that both fic and podfic belong on the same page, it would still hardly be a unique reaction to podfic. Just look at pages about zines made of popular netfic. Also many, many fic pages have sections about podfic on the page. If that's an acceptable way of dealing with this, the other way around shouldn't be a problem either. If the section about a fic gets too big, it can still be moved to a separate page, just like it's done the other way around.

Personally, I like aethel's suggestion best because it clearly marks the page as being about a particular type of fanwork and gives a prominent link in the header that invites the reader to find out more about that particular thing. Also, it treats all fanwork pages the same, improves the templates, and gives us reasons to make even more specific templates, which sounds like an all-around win to me.

To contribute my 2cts on the suggestions:

- I'm in favor of the policy that says titles should remain void of precisions until necessary, so, against adding podfic or (podfic). if we have to break that rule though, I prefer (podfic), I think, but I'm kind of.. wavering on that. (also I'm like frogspace, the fact that we're calling the bit in parenthetical "honorific" is ultra-confusing to me as an ESL speaker. That's.... not an honorific, that's a type. Isn't it? But anyway, moving on.

- I like Sparcicle's suggestion; it doesn't change the infobox template, and I disagree with the idea that adding that sentence *suggests* there should be a page for the fic even if there isn't. I think it says, clearly and succintly, "this is an entry for a podfic, and there is/isn't another entry for the story; the two are *different things*", which IMO is a powerful but subtle way to make the point we need to make, and might prove educational in time, so that if the type of well-meaning vandalism we've seen doesn't keep happening, we can easily decide to remove that extra banner/requirement from podfic entries in a year or whatever.

I care about creating guidelines for Gardeners so that they can correct mistakes from eager editors who got confused on the podfic entries, particularly, simply because I woudn't want podfic people who were preparing to start adding podfic to Fanlore to be discouraged thinking they might have to patrol their podfic entries to protect them, not from information additions or PPOV development, but from misguidedness induced by the primacy of fic over everything else in fandom.

I like aethel's suggestion too, and agree that banners should be added to all fanwork templates, not just podfics, for consistency.

Regarding my suggestion (#2), I don't think that a note should necessarily be a requirement for podfic pages, but that it may be a good addition if an editor anticipates confusion. The idea is to minimize the ambiguity that many podfic page names present without making special rules for podfic pages.

As for the honourific, I think paraka and liviapenn both make good points about "story" versus "fanfic", so I'm ambivalent. I do prefer "fanfic" over "fanfiction", though, because I, at least, don't use "fanfiction" to refer to a single fic ("This is a fanfiction about..." sounds weird to me).

--sparcicle

I'm trying to work up the energy to respond to people individually, but I've been trying all day and have mostly failed. /o\ So, for now at least, here's just me tacking on more thoughts.

It's not that I want to ban people forever from adding fic information to a podfic entry. But as

klb pointed out, what I'm more worried about is people making non-meanful additions that change the entry from one about podfic to some sort of weird article that looks like a fic article on the surface but the body of which is about the podfic. Which is what happened in this case and given fandom's current bias for fic over podfic, is very likely to happen again.

I know my thoughts are biased, because I'm the one making a lot of podfic entries and the way I've approached making them. The rec information posted is for the podfic, making the entry seemingly about the fic causes confusion with the rest of the entry.

What I would like is to have a clear and easy way for people visiting the page to realize it's a podfic and make it so that people have to think and restructure if they want to add fic information to the page, rather than doing it willy nilly. That way we're less likely to get almost-vandalized pages and instead will get thoughtful and useful information added.

A lot of interesting points and thoughts.

I'd like to suggest that folks keep in mind the word "vandalize" means to purposely ruin something and to do it with harmful or malicious intent.

In the over three years I've been editing at Fanlore, the instances of actual vandalism (aside from mindless spam) can be counted on one hand.

When folks make changes and additions to pages, it has been done with good faith. People make errors, miscalculate, goof up, misread, and can be clumsy (I've been guilty of all of these things), but they don't vandalize.

No deep thoughts from me, just a quick observation: As a Wiki user, I would expect different art forms to be treated separately. On Wikipedia, as far as I know, the "root" of an artwork is taken into consideration, making the page "A_Scanner_Darkly" and subsequently "A_Scanner_Darkly_(film)" for the movie adaption. I don't think this is necessary for fanlore, if we'd like to emphazise equality of fanwork no matter the source of inspiration. So it would be "Title_(fanfic)" and "Title_(podfic)", no matter what came first. (I think current policy is to write just the title of the fanfic without clarification? That would mean quite some editing to change all fanfic pages, should you take this approach.)
So in short: yes to a disambiguation page and to seperate podfic/fanfic/fanart pages.

Considering that, I like Sparcicle's suggestion, because it makes it easier for me as reader to immediately get to the page I'm looking for, if I accidentially landed on the wrong one - or just to see, what else there is under that name.

BTW, I've added the grey banners to all the fanwork infobox templates now, not just the podfic template.

(In the spirit of using clearly labeled infoboxes to prevent bad edits, I also added the labels to fandom templates, though no power on this Earth will stop newbies from filling up these pages with canon trivia. On one occasion someone actually removed all the fandom info on a page and replaced it with canon/production info.

http://fanlore.org/wiki/Template:FandombyText
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Template:FandombyText-RPF
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Template:Fandom-RPG
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Template:Fandom
)

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regarding the templates