Category talk:Anthology Zines

I've been thinking that this category should really be called Category:Fiction Anthology Zines, because anthologies could contain non-fiction, poetry, plays, etc. Since all the fiction anthologies have a dedicated template, I can simply change the category on the template page, so renaming the category won't be much of a chore. Yes/no?--æþel 20:10, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

While it would be nice to be able to break that category down a bit, I think it might complicate things; so many anthology zines are a complete mix, and even the ones that are supposedly simply fiction often contains bits of other things like poetry, puzzles... And that's assuming one has complete information about the content. I think it would be hard to make the call on whether the anthology was "pure fiction," or not, and that would muddle their organization. --Mrs. Potato Head 21:51, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

We don't need to worry if the zine is "pure" fiction, just that it has fiction in it. I want to change the name to make it clearer what the category is already used for: zines with a significant percentage of fiction content, but not novel zines. The category was created to be a subcategory of Fiction Writing so that we could remove zines from the Fiction Writing category, which we can't do if the category includes zines that have no fiction. At the time we were discussing how to break up the zine categories, I didn't realize that there were so many non-fiction and variety anthology zines, so I didn't know this category could be interpreted differently. I would propose "Fiction Zines" so people could feel comfortable assigning multiple categories to zines with a variety of content, but we need to exclude novel zines. [unless! We use "Fiction Zines" and move "Novel Zines" to a subcategory.] (Meanwhile, we have a category for nonfiction anthologies -- Non-fiction Zines -- and for zines with unknown content -- Zines. I've been recategorizing zines with unknown content to the main zine category.)

If "Anthology Zines" is useful as an umbrella category, I can still easily create Fiction Anthology Zines as a subcategory and change the template (the ZineAnthology template would still have to be for fiction zines), but then what would go in the Anthology Zines category? "Non-fiction Zines" pretty much takes care of everything else. Non-fiction Zines is currently the parent of zines that are NOT anthology zines, so some shuffling would be in order if we wanted to put it under Anthology Zines. Basically, I screwed up in the original plan (to make the Fiction Writing and Zine categories smaller), and the only way I can think to fix everything without starting over and editing 7,000 zine pages is not to categorize zines by whether they are anthologies, but by whether they have fiction. And just ignore the newsletters that contain fiction (arghhh!).

In brief, one of these two changes can be implemented with a minimum of editing:

Fiction Writing (no change)

Fiction Anthology Zines (formerly Anthology Zines)

Novel Zines (no change)

or

Fiction Writing (no change)

Fiction Zines (formerly Anthology Zines)

Novel Zines (no change)

--æþel 03:42, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

I think your first suggestion (make the Fiction Anthology Zines a subcategory) would be best -- we can put known zines with both fiction and non-fiction content into the Anthology Zines cat, and remove the cats of Category:Fiction Writing and Category:Non-fiction Writing from zines that have both (solving the "Anthologies that contain both fiction and nonfiction may appear in both categories." problem, as well.) --awils1 05:51, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

There are some problems with that approach, to the point where I'm now thinking we shouldn't have Anthology Zines. First, I don't think zines appearing in two categories is a problem. Another is that if we remove zines that have both fiction and nonfiction from the fiction category, then someone browsing the fiction category won't find all relevant zines. A related issue is that in many cases we only know *some* of the contents. And a lot of fiction anthologies have an editorial or a few poems or puzzles or a lot of art that we might or might not know about. Another issue is that "non-fiction zines" is a broad category that could include zines that are not anthologies. Resource Zines (a subcat of Nonfiction) are nonfiction, but are they anthologies? From what I've seen, most zines that are not newsletters or resource zines are some kind of anthology, so how useful is it as a subcategory?

There is a benefit to an Anthology Zine parent category--it's nice and tidy:

Anthology Zines

Fiction Anthology Zines

Non-fiction Anthology Zines

Poetry Zines

But if there's an all-fic newsletter (is there?), we can't label it "Fiction Anthology Zines" (but I think I might have done it anyway, whoops). If someone is more knowledgeable about non-fiction anthologies vs. resource zines and newsletters, then maybe we can figure out a way to do this. --æþel 06:30, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

link to dw

some graphics illustrating how we might reorder zine categories with a minimum of effort: http://fanlore.dreamwidth.org/37012.html

I have to admit to being a little lost on this one, and my head is spinning a bit. First, what are the pros and cons to each proposed option? And some more bits of random info that may or may not be helpful: 1. I don't consider Resource Zines anthologies. 2. My gut feeling is that most of the mixed fiction and non-fiction zines are Star Trek, there are hardly any other anthology zines that contain fiction and articles/essays/other non-fiction stuff. 3. Newsletters and letterzines very rarely have any fiction in them. 4. I worry folks will be confused by having Novel Zines and Fiction Zines as two separate things; to me they are the "same." 5. Seeing how the vast majority of zines out there are already represented on Fanlore, this isn't so much an issue of making it easy for future folks to label new stuff, but of labeling what we have so folks can find what they are looking for. 6. This is all good to think about, and I believe we need more input from some other folks. --Mrs. Potato Head 21:02, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

I too was feeling very lost (in spite of the awesome visual guides). But after reading Mrs PH feedback the reasons for my confusion becomes clearer. I agree with her observatons.

We have fiction and non-fiction. All zines fall into these two categories. There are a small handful of zines that contain a bit of both, but those are outliers. Most fans are looking for more basic categories. If I were to make changes I'd suggest

• Fiction:
  • Novels
  • Anthologies
  • Poetry

• Non-Fiction
  • Resource zines
  • Clubzines
  • Newsletters/letterzines

Then, if we need to add any new categories down the road, they could be fit into the Fiction/Non-Fiction groupings.--FanloreFan 22:01, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Adding two small cents: "Anthology zines" is a phrase that makes total sense to me. (Whether that's the same sense it makes to you is another matter.) I interpret it to cover zines containing multiple short works. That includes both zines with only short stories, and those that mingle short fic with poetry/essays/etc.

I get "novel zines", too. On the other hand, the term "Fiction zines" is just obscure. -- Greer Watson 22:25, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, "poetry" isn't fiction and "club zines" sometimes are (unless clubzines are "about the club" instead of just "by the club"?), but the issue I was concerned with was that "Anthology Zines" wasn't being interpreted as a fiction-oriented category. Anthology zines containing only non-fiction are categorized under Non-fiction Zines and not Anthology Zines, so the name seemed misleading. But since "Anthology Zines" includes zines with both fiction and non-fiction, maybe it's fine the way it is?

I just went back to the dw post and added brief descriptions of options 1 and 2. Option 1 (rename to Fiction Anthology Zines) is the simplest to do and fixes the original issue I had (if it is an issue). Option 2 (rename to Fiction Zines) would be useful if a lot of newsletters contained fiction, but if we don't need to worry about that, then option 2 is less useful. Option 3 was the result of Awils1's comments above and has the advantage of removing more individual zines from the main zine category. However, if it's not intuitive, then it's not useful.--æþel 00:33, 31 December 2010 (UTC)