Categories/templates in Animanga and Translation?

[briar_pipe]

*tiptoes in*

Hi folks! I've been tackling one small boulder in the mountain of fansub information not yet on the wiki, and I have a few questions about categories and templates.

• There is a template for fansubbers/scanlators, labelled WIP. It currently has no subcategory attached. Can we give it one? And if so, is there a neutral term we could use, like "Fan Translators"? That way, we won't need a new template every time a new medium/genre/source country/language is added to the wiki.
  
  
• Should Anime Club pages use the Fan Club Template? Does anyone see anything present in/missing from that template that would make it not work with those?
  
  
• It'd be great to have a category for all the scanlation/fansub-related material besides groups (process, history, websites, terms, fan-created technology, etc.). There are at least 14 pages that fit this criteria, with many more waiting to be created.
  
  • It might make sense to have a top-level "Fan Translation" category under "Fan Activities" that could be medium-, language-, and community-neutral.
    
  • A "Fan Translators" subcat could be put here.
  
  
• Per a discussion on the Anime talk page, I asked on the Anime & Manga Fandom talk page why there were several anime series listed as subcategories on that page but no subcategories for non-series pages. Sparc and I discussed, and I moved the fandoms over to the Anime and/or Manga categories (depending on canon). Only then did we see the note at the bottom of the Anime & Manga Fandom page about moving series subcats to there. No one else has commented to help us understand the situation, so Sparc suggested I bring it here. My concerns:
  
  • There are thousands of animanga fandoms. Currently, 97 anime have their own pages and 33 have subcats, while manga are at 86/28, with overlap. I predict that as AO3 becomes more popular with anime & manga fans moving from ffnet, more will discover Fanlore, and those numbers will shoot up.
    
  • If we do want those fandom subcats on the Anime & Manga Fandom page, I suggest they be put in a subcategory of their own to keep them from burying the material that has no other animanga home, like websites, glossary terms, conventions, etc.
    
  • The Anime & Manga Fandom page should probably include links to the categories Doujin Fandom, Anime Music Video Fandom, Anime, and Manga. They don't have to be subcats - links at the top would be fine, I think?
    
  • There should probably be additional subcategories created. If anyone wants to come sift through the links and offer opinions, that'd be awesome.

An unrelated question: I'm trying to make an internal link to /a/, in case anyone gets brave enough to tackle 4chan-related info. However, I can't get the wiki to show the //. Any wiki gurus out there know the trick?

Thanks, guys!

Comments

[briar_pipe]

Outside perspectives are good! (Thank you for cleaning up my messes, btw. I'm still reminding myself how to work a wiki. -_-;;)

Translators: In anime/manga fandom, the people who produce scanlations/fansubs are simply called 'translators', so you have a good point. But I think simply calling the template "Translators" or "Translation Groups" might open the door to editors thinking any group that translates canon is fair game, even if they're not fannish? There are lots of non-fannish professional or semi-professional groups/companies out there doing the same thing, legal or not, but they get paid and aren't doing it because they love the works and want them to be available. Or not solely for that reason.

Clubs: I think Anime Clubs should fit the Fan Clubs template just fine, but I wanted to open the door in case someone saw something I didn't.

Categories: There's a top-level Anime & Manga Fandom community category, then two top-level canon categories, Anime and Manga. All the individual anime fandom categories made for canons like Cowboy Bebop and One Piece were dumped in the Anime & Manga Fandom category, which is also the only home for all the non-canon information about that community: websites, terms, cons, clubs, etc. Since many more canons could get their own categories in a short time, it was like looking at an avalanche waiting to fall on the page....

[liviapenn]

Translators: In anime/manga fandom, the people who produce scanlations/fansubs are simply called 'translators', so you have a good point. But I think simply calling the template "Translators" or "Translation Groups" might open the door to editors thinking any group that translates canon is fair game, even if they're not fannish? There are lots of non-fannish professional or semi-professional groups/companies out there doing the same thing, legal or not, but they get paid and aren't doing it because they love the works and want them to be available. Or not solely for that reason.

That is an interesting gray area. It seems like most of the big activity categories do have "Fan" at the beginning-- "Fan Writer," "Fanartist." Others don't have the "fan" prefix, but mostly the ones that are strictly fannish terms anyway (pro music video editors don't call themselves "vidders," etc.) There are exceptions, like "Archivist" or "Moderator," and possibly "Zine Ed," so I guess it could go either way.

[briar_pipe]

I guess it's a matter of figuring out what editors are likely to do? I also think it's fine for the template to be used for groups who translate fanworks - in fact, given the quantity of doujin scanlations available, that's almost certainly going to happen.

You have a good point about the terms we use now, most of which seem to be differentiated by how likely they are to cause confusion. (A zine is a very specific type of work, and archivists or moderators outside of fandom aren't likely to attract fannish interest in a page.) I think the core questions are, "Is this term broad enough to encompass all the fannish practices we want it to encompass?" and "Is this term specific enough to exclude the non-fannish practices we want it to exclude?"

Answers may vary?

[liviapenn]

Also, in terms of excluding the non-fannish practices, I think there is a place on Fanlore for talking about these amateur translation groups that are more for-profit than labor-of-love, as long as the page is about the fannish context & history-- IDK anything about these groups, really, but I can imagine a page explaining about the evolution of fannish opinions about these groups, fannish controversies about translation choices, how a group affected the history of a fandom ("English language XYZ fandom was relatively small until ABC group translated the source, bringing many new fans in...") and stuff like that. So, from that perspective, it could go in the "translation" category just like fan-translated fanfic, doujin scanlations, and fans translating source works as a labor of love.

(I was trying to think of an example that wasn't a for-profit business, like Livejournal, and I went to the page on "Fifty Shades of Grey," -- which, now that I look about it, could be hugely expanded in terms of the *fannish* reaction, both within Twilight fandom & in wider "fandom," various criticisms & backlashes, etc.)