Fanlore's Journal

During the Fanlore chat today, we were discussing the need for more documentation of Tumblr fandom, so I made a meme template so that fannish memes on tumblr can have a page. (Please check it out and let me know if there should be more fields, etc.) However, the template still needs a category. Does Category:Memes as a subcategory under Category:Tropes & Genres work?

Existing pages that might belong in the category include Stilinski_Twins, Flower Crown, I Believe in Sherlock Holmes, Caramelldansen and How to Wear Men's Shirts

Notes on a few Fanlore templates.

First off, I remember that someone asked years ago that the Fiction Writing category be removed from the Archive template since there are fannish archives of things other than fanfic. I think it's time to do something about this, and so far I've come up with a few possible solutions:

1. Create a new Template:ArchiveFiction and attach the Fiction Writing category. Then remove fiction category from Template:ArchiveProfile. Then fix every fiction archive page.

2. Create a new Template:ArchiveFiction and create another category to go with it--Fiction Archives--that will be a subcategory of Archives and Fiction Writing. Then fix every fiction archive page.

3. Remove Fiction Writing category from the existing archive template and don't add archives to the Fiction Writing category at all. Optional: we could make the Archives category a subcat of Fiction Writing, Non-Fiction Writing, Video, Audio, and Visual Art.

My favorite is #2, but of course there are archives that host multiple types of fanworks, so we'd have to manually add the Fiction Archives category to some pages (how many?).

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And then I had some thoughts on the Convention template and the Offline Spaces category. I also created a Sandbox notice--please let me know if it makes sense.

Meanwhile, Amy has been working some deep wiki mojo on whole classes of templates and has fixed up the RelatedLinks template.

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ETA May 19: Everyone seemed in favor of #3, so I removed "Fiction Writing" from the Archives template.

The Wiki Committee has approved "Tropes & Genres" as a new floating category (a top-level category with no subcategories, like Fanworks and Glossary).

The idea is to group together all the pages that discuss genres, tropes, and trends within fanworks (all types of fanworks--fanfic, art, vids, etc.). There will be a lot of overlap with the Glossary category, but some trope pages are not fannish terms (cyberpunk, unicorns, Animals in Fanworks, Rape in Fanworks, etc.). So this category is also designed to fix the problem of miscategorized and uncategorized trope/genre pages.

Example pages to go in the category: Story Tropes, Slash Tropes, Animals in Fanworks, Cats, Undercover in a Gay Bar, Constructed Reality, Bodyswap, Hurt/Comfort, Slash, Gen, Het, Tentacles, Landscape

Pages that should NOT be included: fanwork formats like Podfic, Fanfiction, Zine, Vid, etc. These belong under Fan Activities


I have created a template to go with the new category. I've had some feedback already, but the template hasn't been used yet, so please let me know if there are major flaws, etc. I tried something new that can be easily changed even after the template is in use: a row containing some pre-programmed links to pages that would otherwise be linked manually in most trope pages (e.g. Story Tropes).

May I direct your attention to a few discussions on the wiki? These might benefit from more input.

We've got a draft template for vids that's ready to be used if no one can think of any more/different fields to put in it.

We're also discussing how to divide up the zine category into more manageable chunks.

And Doro has asked about a template for timelines and/or histories.