Fanlore:Fandom as a Category

This Fanlore page is currently protected from editing as it is archived. Please see the current page for the most current version of Fanlore policy or discussions.

Purpose

This will set up a top-level structure for all fandoms to be their own category. Further for large and complex fandoms this will set up a second-level category structure to allow users to find aspects of the fandom more easily.

Background

When the wiki was started in Oct 2008, it was believed that each fandom would have a page dedicated to it, and all relevant information would be made up of sub-pages. This worked fine for smaller fandoms, but larger fandoms with many different aspects quickly became unwieldy.

For example: Harry Potter has 24 sub-pages and that does not even begin to cover the characters and pairings available in that fandom. Star Trek has 11 movies and 5 TV series, each of which has its own following. The Original series alone has 40 years of fan activity and fan fiction to be documented.

There are literally thousands of zine listing that have no other category than zine. There's no way to sort the zines by fandom or any other sub-category.

Obviously, a more robust strategy needs to be implemented.

Scope

To that end, all fandoms will be considered a category. For larger or franchise fandoms, other categories will be added to accommodate the major aspects of each fandom. These won't be the same for every fandom, since obviously each fandom has its own aspects. Some examples:

etc...

Policy Change

For all fandoms, a single category will be used, for example, "Star Trek" will be a single category, along with TOS, TNG, DS9, Enterprise, Animated Series, 2009 movie, each constituting individual, but linked categories.

Category:Star Trek
Category:Star Trek TOS
Category:Star Trek TNG
Category:Star Trek AOS

etc...

Additionally major fandoms with large secondary aspects will have another level of category:

Category:Star Trek Art
Category:Star Trek Characters
Category:Star Trek Communities
Category:Star Trek Pairings

Individual fandoms will become subcategories under the Category:Fandoms_by_Source_Text.

All registered users can create fandom categories; please discuss on the talk pages if you are unsure how to name a category.

Once a fandom category is created, all pages relevant to that fandom should be added to the category.

Technical Aspects

Formatting The Main Page and Linked Pages

Each Fandom will have a category page created. And that category will be added to the existing fandom page. For example the current Harry Potter page will have Category:Harry Potter added to the categories at the bottom of the page:

Category:Fandoms by Source Text Category:Books_&_Literature Category:Harry Potter

For the page Draco/Ginny, the following will be added to the bottom:

Category:Relationships Category:Harry Potter Relationships

Moving the Existing Pages

To move the pages, we will use "Move" at the top of the page. Harry Potter/Harry/Draco will be moved to Harry/Draco. Each sub-page will have to be moved separately.

And the appropriate categories will be placed at the bottom:

Harry Potter Relationships

Input from Fanlore Community

The wiki committee believes that Fanlore user's input is essential in any policy we propose. A discussion was hosted on the Dreamwidth community here.