Category talk:Challenges

Categories

Would it be possible to create Categories for Multifandom challenges and/or challenges that are still ongoing? Crookedspoon (talk) 18:36, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

Seconding this --Sparrow (talk) 18:45, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Could we also create a Category for Reverse Bangs? They seem popular enough to warrant it. --ShadowMayura (talk) 01:57, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Further divide into glossary?

I know there's already a Glossary, but since there's a lot of different types of challenges/fanwork events (particularly with the resurgence of zines), and also things like Fandom Stocking (which imo is not the same as a gift exchange) I think it might be useful to have a category just for types of challenges? For example, if someone wanted to look at a list of the types of fanwork events there are, but they come to this category and instead see a large array of specific fandom events rather than a general list.

Just an idea! --Sparrow (talk) 18:44, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

That sounds like a List of Challenge Types page. Or perhaps the main Challenge page needs to be updated to be clearer. It would be more in line for Fanlore to create subcategories for individual challenges (Category:Big Bangs & Reverse Bangs? Category:Fests? Category:Gift Exchanges?) and leave general challenge glossary terms in the main Challenges category.--aethel (talk) 00:20, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Ah I came here to suggest something about this because matching was put into the challenges category and although it definitely belongs there, it does seem like there should be some distinction between "pages that are about individual challenges" and "pages that are about challenges in general" because someone looking to understand how challenges work and what different kinds there are and so on shouldn't have to hunt for the relevant terms between examples.

Maybe we should create more subcategories and remove the general "challenges" category from pages that are already in a challenges subcategory — for example The Draco/Ginny Exchange and other HP challenges appear to be in both categories, and the same for Game of Thrones. Or at least make a subcategory for challenge glossary terms; fandoms have them so I don't see why a fannish activity couldn't have one. It could have things like matching, Dear Creator letters, DNW, etc. - Hoopla (talk) 03:23, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

I would be in favour of a Challenge Glossary subcategory. One question, would it be a subcategory of the Challenges category or the Glossary category?

(Personally, I think it would make more sense as a Glossary subcat, since looking at the Glossary Category shows there are already multiple subcats for different types of Glossary, whereas the Challenges subcats are all types of challenge. But I could see both sides). -- enchantedsleeper (talk) 22:10, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Maybe we could have it be a subcategory in both the Challenge and Glossary categories, that way if someone clicks on either the challenge or glossary category they could find the subcategory of challenge glossary. -- Kingstoken (talk) 22:53, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Yes, my preference would be for it to be crosslisted, ideally, because the problem I'm seeing that I would like to solve is:

1. User does not know anything about challenges/exchanges and wants to know more after reading the relevant page.
2. User comes to Category:Challenges looking for more relevant pages.
3. User finds 500 pages, most of which are for individual challenges, some of which have names that make that hard to guess before clicking. (Eg, Bingo is for the kind of challenge, Kink Bingo is a specific challenge)
4. User cannot easily navigate between Fanlore pages with general information (about slang, types of events, kinds of activities, general history or wank, etc) and specific information (about a challenge that ran for a few years or a specific fanwork)

People looking for more info about challenges won't think to look for a glossary subcat about it in the glossary category, it feels like? Although I guess we could link in the category header! Either way, I don't know if a glossary subcategory is the best way to solve that problem, but it seems like the least radical and easiest to do quickly. Maybe it requires more thought, though...

Like, one problem to consider is that not every page that isn't a specific challenge will be a glossary term, because pages about wank or timelines of meta or whatever aren't glossary terms but are general information pages that someone interested in the topic might want to view easily. We might not have any pages about exchange wank yet, but we probably will eventually, plus whatever we do here might end up being applied to other categories (like, Category:Fanfiction) where basically the same general vs specific problem exists.

I guess ideally it seems to me that many categories would be more useful if one didn't have look through a lot of specific pages to find general pages. Print Zines and Customs is an interesting page but it's sandwiched between Prime Directive (Star Trek club zine published in Australia) and Project QL both of while are stub articles about, respectively, a Star Trek zine and a Quantum Leap zine.

Speaking of which! One thing that would help cut down on this somewhat is if things that are in subcategories aren't crosslisted in their parent categories.

• The Draco/Ginny Exchange is in both Category:Challenges and Category:Harry Potter Challenges
• Project QL is in both Category:Zines and Category:Quantum Leap Zines.

Can I feel free to remove more general categories from pages that are listed in more specific subcategories? Also lmao sorry for the essay on this subject. - Hoopla (talk) 23:04, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

I see what your saying, but you can't remove a challenge like The Draco/Ginny Exchange from the parent category because an article is automatically added to the Challenge category when you use the Challenge infobox. Should there be a different type of infobox for individual challenges, maybe, but that would mean changing hundreds of infoboxes. It would probably be easier to create a Challenge Glossary subcategory at this point, or to create an infobox for types of challenges. -- Kingstoken (talk) 00:23, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Oooh, I see. That is a kind of unfortunate downside to having the category in the infobox, but it wouldn't be that hard to change it. At least, not any harder than adding and deleting categories. There are a couple different ways. For example:

• Right now the infobox template includes <includeonly>[[Category:Challenges]]</includeonly> but it could instead say <includeonly>{{{category|[[Category:Challenges]]}}}</includeonly> so that the category can be changed when the template is used. This way, if the category= parameter is left blank it defaults to the general challenges category, but if it says category=[[Category:Harry Potter Challenges]] it would be in that category instead. This might be the most easily scalable choice, although adding the new parameter to existing infoboxes would involve some labor.
• We could also create new infoboxes. In this case, an infobox called Template:HPChallenge that's exactly the same as Template:Challenge except with a different category and name. Switching over the infoboxes on the pages would be as easy as adding "HP" in front of "Challenges". This would necessitate having a different infobox for many different subcategories, though, and I'm not sure we want that.

I agree that creating a Challenge Glossary subcategory would be a good, easy fix that we should probably do either way! But I think that this is a flaw in our current categories system that's only going to get worse, so we should probably at least talk about it? - Hoopla (talk) 00:51, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Okay I am going to create the subcategory of Challenge Glossary, it is a good measure for now, if someone else wants to attempt the larger task of recoding infoboxes or creating new infoboxes the more power to you, we can always delete things later if need be -- Kingstoken (talk) 11:43, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for doing that! I changed the Challenge infobox so that the category can be set using the "category" parameter, but it will default to Category:Challenges if left blank. Based on the Category:Fanfiction talk page, it seems that listing things only in their fandom category and not in the general category has happened because we just haven't been creating new infoboxes along with new categories. This should help fix that at least for this category, although changing and fixing the fanfiction category is... a larger project. - Hoopla (talk) 20:56, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Two Challenges with the Same Name

I've come across two completely separate challenges in Supernatural fandom that have the same name. I've checked and they are not at all connected. They are both big bangs, one was run on livejournal and one on tumblr. I would like to make pages for both eventually, but I was just wondering how to name the articles, should I name them like Crowley Big Bang (Livejournal) and Crowley Big Bang (Tumblr), or something similar. Any advice would be appreciated -- Kingstoken (talk) 22:11, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

note on sorting

I re-sorted a few items so that the subcategories are grouped by: type of challenge under #, challenge by fandom under *, and misc categories with the default sort. This sorting method seemed the path of least resistance given how most subcategories were already sorted. Another option is that instead of grouping similar subcategories together with a hack, we could create a placeholder category called Category:Challenges by Fandom and move the [Fandom] Challenges categories under it. Then maybe the other subcategories (Big Bang Challenges, Meme Communities, Challenge Glossary, etc) could have a default sort. Keeping track of different sorting hacks on the different parent categories is fairly tedious and not intuitive. (I think Wikipedia sometimes goes too far with layers upon layers of placeholder categories, but I think this approach is useful in moderation.)--aethel (talk) 17:02, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

I'd be fine with that - especially since we already have Category:Challenges by Year, so there's precedent for it. --enchantedsleeper (talk) 23:10, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

So you would make Category:Challenges by Fandom a subcategory of Category:Challenges? -- Kingstoken (talk) 10:05, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

Right, it would look like Category:Challenges > Category:Challenges by Fandom > Category:Marvel Challenges, etc.--aethel (talk) 21:17, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

I'm onboard with this, but I'd also like to propose applying 'x by fandom' subcategories to other categories - I'm the one that made the Challenges by Year category, and I've made a lot of other 'x by year' categories. Pinky G Rocket (talk) 19:55, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

I think that makes sense.--aethel (talk) 20:37, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

I created Category:Challenges by Fandom, moved the specific fandom subcategories underneath it, and resorted the remaining categories under Challenges.--aethel (talk) 01:20, 17 September 2022 (UTC)