Category talk:Perspectives on Fans

I think this might work better as "Perspectives on Fandom" or "External Reactions to Fandom". Does that make sense?

Msilverstar 04:30, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Subcategories?

It looks like there are over 15 "Perspectives on Fans"/Press articles in Category:Harry Potter, and we're getting close in Category:Twilight. Is it time for some subcategories? What would they be called? (Category:Perspectives on Harry Potter Fans?) --sparc 17:50, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Star Trek must be close, too, though a lot of what's on Fanlore isn't categorized in that way yet. --Mrs. Potato Head 17:58, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

I went ahead and created Category:Perspectives on Harry Potter Fans. It looks lonely as a subcategory of Category:Perspectives on Fans, but if there are no objections I was going to make a Perspectives on Twilight Fans and Perspectives on Star Trek Fans and organize them like Category:Websites (* for fandom subcategories, # for the existing ones). Does this work?

(Side note: Template:Commentary automatically adds the Perspectives on Fans category, so pages are appearing in both Category:Perspectives on Fans and Category:Perspectives on Harry Potter Fans.) --sparc 08:27, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

I think making this a perspectives on fans subcat is probably not the best solution. Very few of these press articles are actually about fans - I think none of the Twilight articles are -, they are much more about fan activities and fanworks and the public impact thereof. I don't have a good solution for this. Maybe making a Harry Potter Press subcat instead? After all, the articles are sorted there for a reason. I can only say that describing all these 50 Shades pages as Perspectives on Twilight Fans looks very wrong to me. That's not what these articles are about. Maybe it would help to not insert the fandom into the cat but adding it at the beginning, like we do with other cats. Harry Potter Perspectives on Fans, Twilight Perspectives on Fans, etc. --Doro 09:14, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

I had actually thought about "Harry Potter Press", but it seemed misleading to me (because it's not all HP press, just articles about fandom), and thought "Perspectives on Fans" would be more appropriate for the comparable (e.g.) Star Trek category, which has few press articles but several others in the "Perspectives" category (academia, Star Trek Lives! etc.). But I do see your point, especially regarding the 50 shades articles... I do think they should go somewhere (because right now they're just clogging up the main Twilight category, and that doesn't seem right) but now I'm torn again, lol. --sparc 09:37, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Then I suggest to change it, at least for now, to Harry Potter Perspectives on Fans, Twilight Perspective on Fans, etc. If there are enough articles/files, we could have different subcats, like Harry Potter Press, Harry Potter Meta, etc. Maybe we should have a closer look at these categories in general. For example, the Industry cat is mostly people; is it really useful to have that under Perspective on Fans? The Commentators cat is only people! Academia seems to include everyone who is listed as Commentators plus the things they actually say about fandom. Maybe it would be more consistent to remove Industry from Perspective on Fans and just let it be a people category while adding a Category:Commentary cat to Perspective on Fans which includes the things these industry people say. Then remove the Commentars from Academia and let them just be a people cat as well. --Doro 11:11, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, okay. I'm not thrilled with that one either but I guess it's our best option. I'll move the HP cat over in a bit. --sparc 04:58, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

idea for subcategories and templates

This category structure is awkward, though the subcategories for Academia and Industry have proven useful when we had pages like TPTB's Involvement and Interference that we didn't know where else to put. I created two more commentary templates so that we could put some of the content here into better-defined subcategories (or sub-subcategories): Template:CommentaryNewsMedia and Template:CommentaryAcademic. The category structure I had in mind:

Perspectives on Fans

Academia

Academic Commentaries

Perspectives on Fans

Press

News Media Commentaries

Better yet, let's get rid of Press altogether as I don't see any journalists' names in there and "Press" seems like an outdated print-oriented term. What say you?--æþel (talk) 21:02, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

I think there's often considerable overlap. For example, the radio programme When Harry Potter Met Frodo is a documentary that included perspectives from acafans, fans, non-fans and journalists, and there have been lots of similar programmes on radio & television. Freelance authors such as Roz Kaveney fall on the boundary between journalist, academic and fan. There's been a semi-systematic attempt to add coverage here of newspaper articles, but much less so for documentaries, as far as I can tell.

I don't see the rationale for the inclusion of the word "News" in the description.

I do agree that "Press" is not the best description. Perhaps rename it "Media", though I know renaming cats is a faff? Espresso Addict (talk) 01:04, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Categories cannot be renamed, only created and deleted. I suggested "News Media" instead of "Media" because of potential confusion with Media Fandom, but otherwise Media makes sense.

It doesn't matter who gets interviewed, but if the radio documentary is a standalone thing not attached to a news/commentary show, then I'd say leave it in the parent category. Same with film documentaries, even if they're produced by PBS. Academia would be anything peer reviewed or anything published that would help an academic get tenure. Not everything would fit in the Academic or Media subcategories, but that's okay. --æþel (talk) 03:33, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

OK, how about: Category:Journalists' Commentaries or Category:Journalistic Commentaries or Category:Commentaries by Journalists?--æþel (talk) 01:10, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

I'd go for the last one because it feels more "natural." --Mrs. Potato Head (talk) 01:21, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

OK, fourth option: path of least resistance means naming it Category:Press Commentaries to match the Category:Press. If we wanted to rename Press to Journalism, then we would use Category:Commentaries by Journalists.--æþel (talk) 20:55, 2 November 2013 (UTC)