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Sorted Tables, Wiki formatting in general

Friday, November 20th, 2009 10:53 am

So, I was working on the Shounen article, and I wanted to make a point about the whole genre vs. demographic thing. (In Japan, "shounen" = comics aimed at boys; in English-speaking fandom, "shounen" = that Dragonball stuff.) I was thinking that a nice, sortable table would be just the thing to organize the list of popular series people had already come up with, but in creating it, I noticed two things:

First, I was expecting the list to mostly be titles that ran in Shounen Jump (a very major magazine responsible for a lot of the unified genre elements that make English-speaking fandom consider shounen a genre). I was not expecting 100% of them to be from there! Surely there are some other popular series that aren't. Detective Conan/Case Closed isn't (and I'll go add it when I finish this post), but I'd love it if anyone could think of some others to add. Here's the popular series section of the shounen article.

Second, I knew of sortable tables from Wikipedia, so I just assumed I could do them on Fanlore. However, when I looked at the editing help pages, they weren't mentioned. Does this mean they're not allowed? Or does this just mean we need more documentation? I copied the formatting from Wikipedia (which has extensive documentation on the subject), and it shows up fine on Fanlore.

Wikipedia's page on sorting and sortable tables
Fanlore's page on tables

Fandom by country/language?

sqbr

Monday, November 16th, 2009 09:01 am

A while ago (before Fanlore) I was curious about the difference between fandoms by country and couldn't find much information. I came across some interesting information today about Russian fandom and decided I'd help out anyone else interested in the subject by adding it to Fanlore..and couldn't find any pages about Russian (or Russian language) fandom.

I decided to make a page following the template of some other country or language specific fandom page..and couldn't find any. The closest was tags about the country a work is set in, which is really not the same thing.

So: is there a template/example for this sort of thing I'm missing? If not, should there be one? There's been lots of discussion on metafandom about fandom in non-English-speaking countries which I think would make for interesting reading and I imagine it could be helpful to have links for non-English speaking fans to find each other. I also think that specifying when things are country specific would help avoid the "Fandom=American/English speaking fandom" thing. Also there's a lot of Japan/Japanese specific topics which it seems logical to have a Category for.

I'm still very new to editing the wiki and feel like this sort of thing should be done in a proper consistent way so am uncomfortable just chucking a page together based off my best judgement, especially since all I have to add to the page is a few links and "this is a stub".

The links about russian fandom, for anyone who's interested or feels like making a page:
http://henryjenkins.org/2007/07/oh_those_russians_the_not_so_m.html
http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/07/oh_those_russians_the_not_so_m_1.html
http://ruff.fanrus.com/

furries?

msilverstar

Friday, November 13th, 2009 10:23 pm

The Furry_Fandom entry is a tiny little stub. I know nothing of the fandom, and it would be nice to have something more to link to. Anyone?

News on front page

lian

Friday, October 30th, 2009 11:37 am

I wondered if it wouldn't make sense to promote major policy changes to the news blurb on the front page -- the fanworks renaming policy has quite an impact on the wiki (okay, mainly on gardener clean-up, heh), but old-format articles are being created all the time because except for this community, I've not seen the change advertised anywhere. What do you think -- what should News be used for?

GeoCities Rescue Project...

aethel

Saturday, October 24th, 2009 07:37 pm

By my estimation, we have two days until GeoCities gets deleted, and

meg_r's spreadsheet of fansites to-be-rescued is still pretty long. So ... which should be done first? I see a lot of personal fansites, some of which may not contain more than a few pictures and links. I also see a lot of sites that have been indexed by the Way Back Machine. Are there any major/popular fansites on GeoCities that haven't been documented yet and are not in the Way Back Machine?

ETA: See also IO9's Greatest Science Fiction Sites We'll Miss on GeoCities

ETA Oct. 28: Check out www.reocities.com. So far, it has good coverage of Area51.

Tags:

geocities

Two new documentation writers join the Fanlore staff!

christycorr

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 12:07 am

Hey there!

mrsvelvetears and

oxymora have joined the Fanlore staff—they volunteered to rewrite and flesh out the Help and Policy pages, making them more thorough and user-friendly.

We're looking forward to plenty of debates on all sorts of structure and organization matters with you all—Fanlore's bound to grow even more efficient and tidy once they're done. Welcome, Anne and Kerstin! Good luck, and get ready for a lot of work! :)

Tags:

admin: staffing

"Title - Author" page titles

christycorr

Sunday, October 4th, 2009 06:48 am

Having discussed the concerns

ratcreature and Mrs. Potato Head voiced in this post, and given the excellent points they made regarding searching, artists, and authors' name changes, the Fanlore committee agreed to change our policy on fanwork articles' titles: Story Title - Author will be changed to Story Title, with disambiguation pages created as needed.

I'll be going though the wiki myself over the next few days and moving all the pages; if anyone wants to give a hand—especially with changing mentions to fanworks in other pages to each article's new title—your help would be much appreciated! :D

Tags:

admin: policy

categories so confusing

msilverstar

Saturday, October 3rd, 2009 12:24 pm

I came back and tried to use categories and I can't remember how they should go. This Categories page covers too much ground, theory, some examples, and then meta (adding categories).

In the Wiki spirit, I'd like to write a simple, friendly "How to Add Categories" page, simplified and with tons of examples. But I'm going to need people to double-check me, as I'm not the least bit sure I am getting them right.

Also the stern bit at the bottom of every edit box is undoubtedly disconcerting people, I'd like to reword it and link to the friendly page.

And it occured to me, maybe just offer reassurance that they don't have to do categories, the gardeners will take care of those? Because we want their fandom info by far, more than cataloging expertise.

Tags:

categories

author's name on the title page [of every fanzine novel]

morgandawn

Thursday, October 1st, 2009 06:20 pm

Posting this here at the request of a non-DW member who is working hard on Fanlore fanzine entries. She tells me she's in contact with the Fanlore Gardeners, but thought that others may be witnessing similar issues.

PS. Yes, she has entered thousands of fanzines since July. Amazing.

Edited PPS. In re-reading her entry, it occurs to me that adding an author's name to every fanzine novel when there are no existing duplicates is overkill. It is a good tool *when* there *are* duplicates - but it seems (if I read her comments correctly) it causes problems when used in every case as the 'norm'.

"Hey, Can I just have folks revisit this decision to put the name of an author's name on the title page [of every fanzine novel]? I think it's creating a lot of problems.

: makes it difficult for a user to search for the name of a novel she or he wants to find. Most folks don't make a distinction between "search" and "go." And even knowing the difference and then using them doesn't get the information needed. The odd search engine just snarls all this up even more.

: makes it difficult to accurately enter information, creating duplicates and worse

: creates problems down the road when (1) one enters a novel without knowing the author and then locates the author later, this causes confusion and makes more work, (2) one uses a pre-1995 name with initials and then finds out the full name can be used after all (3) one uses a name that later turns out to be one the author says she or he doesn't want used. Every single one of these instances require some fancy footwork and duplications of a lot of effort.

: brings up the political issues of putting an author on the title header but not the artist, which I've been told if the art is "noteworthy" then the artist should also be included, difficult for the same reasons as author names, but also because one often doesn't have the cover on hand AND is also asked to decide what's noteworthy and what isn't

: and why a single author on a novel, but not a single author anthology? It seems awfully arbitrary.

Can folks revisit this decision? I mean, I've added thousands of zines in the last six weeks (revising all of them will be a big headache) but I've still got thousands and thousands to go. Why not nip this now? Please?

Mrs. Potato Head"

How much to copy from original site?

meg_r

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009 09:41 pm

I'm doing some GeoCities rescues, and I'm not sure how much it's appropriate to copy from the original site. Here's the original site: http://www.geocities.com/betareadg/index.html, and here's the fanlore article: http://fanlore.org/wiki/BetaReadG.

I have basically just copied over the indexes for articles/character essays. I haven't put in citations yet, which I need to do, but should I paraphrase it more? The site is about to disappear of course, so I'd like to give a good idea of what it was like, but I'm not sure how much is too much.

Tags:

geocities

I have a question about licenses in the wiki

ratcreature

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 10:20 pm

On the Fanlore:Copyright page it says "Fanlore's position is that the reproduction of zine covers and other fannish artwork falls constitutes a fair use under U.S. copyright law. Artists should be credited (in accordance with any privacy concerns)." -- so I gather if someone else say uploaded a copy of some fanart I posted online to illustrate something, Fanlore doesn't claim the uploaded artwork is theirs even though it is in the Wiki, and others couldn't take it under the "Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license" that the wiki content is released under, the wiki just uses it.

But if I uploaded a copy of my own art to illustrate something (let's say it was even completely original, to not complicate it with the fanart aspect, like say I wanted to illustrate the "drawble" article, I could pick one that doesn't show characters I don't own), that would count as my original work, and be like text I contribute to the wiki, right? So my art, because I uploaded it myself as my original work, would then be automatically released to everyone under the wiki's CC license. Did I understand that right?

Fanlore volunteer opportunity

melina

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 11:52 am

Fanlore is seeking a documentation specialist for help with our policy and help pages. For more information, please see the job posting.

Tags:

admin: staffing

The user template

melina

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 09:35 am

Just a quick note of encouragement to all users to complete a quick and easy user page. For one thing, it means your name won't be red anymore! For another, it will help us more accurate gauge our user base, which is always a good thing.

If you don't want to add a lot of information, that's fine. Even just your name is a good starting place.

To add the user template, copy and paste this into your User:yourname page:

{{UserProfile
|names=
|fandoms=
|links=
}}

If you have any problems, please leave a comment and we'll help you get it sorted.

Tags:

templates

Focus on ... GeoCities?

meg_r

Sunday, September 20th, 2009 01:53 pm

So, can we do this Focus thing? And can we make it on GeoCities sites, soon to be lost and gone forever?

We now have a list of over 350 sites!

It includes: archives, recslists, awards, fan clubs, episode guides, newbie intros, general resource pages! Dozens of fandoms! Surely everyone can find something worth fanloring in there?

The list is here (or try hxxp://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AtkQF_DFcuILdGswaXRqdkVfekNLdVNXc0o5YzFVSFE&hl=en_GB -change xx to tt; since sometimes it only seems to work when copy & pasted, god, IDEK, okay?)

I've been told it looks intimidating, but it's just a list, I swear. There are some tips for using it on the second sheet (down the bottom, under Tips for using the spreadsheet), but really: add new sites to the bottom; add "Yes" against an entry when you've fanlored it; that's about all there is to it.

For access, just comment with an email address.

Sites which have been fanlored so far are listed here (some are still stubs, obviously). Archives and resource pages are being fanlored under the site name (i.e. Karen's Deepwater or Bend it Like Beckham Archive); single author pages are mostly being added under the author's name, (i.e. Alassenya or Anam).

This is our fannish history, and that's what Fanlore's all about, right?

Tags:

geocities

Fanlore vs. other fannish wikis: notes to TWC article

cesperanza

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 10:29 am

Just posting here because I've been reading the new issue of Transformative Works and Cultures and I was quite horrified by Jason Mittell's (really great) essay on Lostpedia, maybe because Fanlore (and somebody's question about how much canon vs. how much fanon should be in Fanlore) was on my mind.

Mittell explains that when he first started working on Lostpedia, "Lostpedia had a space for queer readings and shipping fandom on the page called Pairings," and Pairings were defined as "relationships, either real or suggested, that fans enjoy and would love to see consummated. The desire for love to blossom on the Island between several pairs of characters, to varying degrees of commitment and affection is explored further in fan fiction". Mittell further notes that: "Same-sex pairings were unproblematically included in this list."

But then!

"On January 2, 2009, the Pairings page was transformed without discussion. On that day, a Lostpedia sysop removed all noncanonical relationships from the page, offering only the explanation "removing fan wished relationships. non-encyclopedic cruft."

Mittell himself went in and created a "Pairings (fanon)" page but he also looked at the history of the pairings page and found controversy about shipping, slash, and pairings ("This is an unneeded, idiotic and ridiculous article btw.") and female fans defending themselves ("Emotion and human relationships ARE a totally legitimate part of the Lost world. Just because it's not hard math or supermystical doesn't mean it's not important.")

Anyway, it struck me like some Mirrorverse world of Fanlore, *g*, where the canon is important and fanon, including pairings and fanworks, was not. It did seem also to confirm the sense I got from the Fanlore mods that Fanlore is there to be a record of US and what we made and did more than a record of the shows/canon, etc. So viva "non-encyclopedic cruft!":)

CFAN's Fandom Glossary

anenko

Monday, September 14th, 2009 02:33 pm

I've been hit by a wave of nostalgia recently, and have been tossing up stubs on Fanlore for a lot of my old haunts--especially for the X-Men comics fandom (I couldn't believe that no one had already tackled CFAN!)

On my search for screencaps, I rediscovered CFAN's fandom glossary. I was thinking about moving over the information there to Fanlore, but wondered how useful people would actually find it. A lot of the terms are obsolete (so far as I know). I don't see "egoboo," "sillyfic," "feedback fic" or "archive fic" used these days.

Beyond that, I don't feel completely right copying CFAN's content (even rephrased and cited).

Opinions?

How ok is it if I create lists of links or info about canon?

sqbr

Sunday, September 13th, 2009 09:40 pm

Having just discovered this comm I thought I'd use it to ask about the two main questions which stop me editing.

When I can't find information on a subject and have to look it up myself I like to create a resource listing what I've found to help anyone else in the same boat. Fanlore should be a perfect place for this, but I find myself unsure as to whether or not my particular approach would be welcome.

First: How much information about canon should there be on pages about a fandom? I tend to know much more about canon than fandom for the stuff I like, and SOME info about canon is necessary to understand discussions of fandom, but I never know how much is too much. Are there examples of pages which get it right to work from?

Second: I'm a maths major. I like writing lists, in this cases lists of cool/relevant stuff I've found. But the Fanlore pages I've read seem more to be walls of text scattered with references rather than resources.

EDIT: Lists seem to be ok, sweet!

For example: For a long time I couldn't find any collected info about fancomics.
I made a page at Comixpedia with all the ones I could find (this is the old version).

Someone deleted the list. I was annoyed, but eventually inspired to create my own community to post them into, and then made a less list-y entry for this wiki which just links the community and some other places to get started.

Would my original list-y type of entry be unwelcome? Or would it be ok if I made it's own page "List of Fancomics"? (There's no point making a Category since none of them have their own page)

Specifically, would it be ok if I created a list of fanart gift exchanges and challenges? It took me ages to find any, and I'm sure other people would be interested, but I'm not sure Fanlore is the place to post such a list.

Are there any places on the wiki that would benefit from some of my link-collecting list-making tendencies? I make no guarantee that I'll be inspired to work on them but you never know :)

Image Uploading

anenko

Friday, September 11th, 2009 08:38 pm

I've just uploaded images to Fanlore for the first time. I think readability suffered a bit in my attempts to resize the images. If anyone more experienced in the ins-and-outs of Fanlore thinks the images need to be corrected, I have the original (full sized) screencaps available.

( Read more... )

GeoCities Rescue Project!

francescacoppa

Thursday, September 10th, 2009 07:37 pm

Just to say that I'm thrilled at

arduinna's call for folks to list links to (and maybe stub? screencap? fill out? add to?) GeoCities pages. We could really use all the help we can get, here!! I'm wondering if maybe this can be the first

fanlore challenge as suggested by

ratcreature earlier today--maybe folks can take a look over there and see if there's a page they're invested in documenting/saving?

Examples: some fan pages that have been stubbed or preserved in Fanlore as part of GeoCities Rescue:

http://fanlore.org/wiki/Nic
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Alassenya
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Jonquil
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Sweet_Sorcery
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unovis
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Silver_Chipmunk
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Rabidsamfan

Any help anybody wants to give here is greatly greatly appreciated! (And if you know the owner/moderator of a GeoCities fanfiction site, please tell them to contact me: we can give them a beta account for their fic!)

Tags:

geocities

fun with subpages!

aethel

Thursday, September 10th, 2009 05:33 pm

I've been flailing around Fanlore for some time now, trying to figure out what should be a subpage and what shouldn't, and I thought I'd collect some flailings here instead of continuing to pester people on the wiki:

( list of observations )

In conclusion: I just now found the Help:Subpages. I think it's time to update it! I'd like to see a list that clearly states what we're sure we're using subpages for, what we're sure we're NOT using subpages for, and what we're just not sure about yet. What say you?

Fanlore's Journal

April 2023

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Expand Cut Tags

Sorted Tables, Wiki formatting in general

Fandom by country/language?

furries?

News on front page

GeoCities Rescue Project...

Two new documentation writers join the Fanlore staff!

"Title - Author" page titles

categories so confusing

author's name on the title page [of every fanzine novel]

How much to copy from original site?

I have a question about licenses in the wiki

Fanlore volunteer opportunity

The user template

Focus on ... GeoCities?

Fanlore vs. other fannish wikis: notes to TWC article

CFAN's Fandom Glossary

How ok is it if I create lists of links or info about canon?

Image Uploading

GeoCities Rescue Project!

fun with subpages!