Category talk:Zines

Hi, this much needed Zines overview page isn't linked from the main Fan Activities > Print Media page yet. Could someone with more powerz than me add this? --Mary Crawford 17:28, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I think I have it fixed now. I found an extra ':' that might have caused the problem. --rache 17:52, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Question: In cases where we have the information, should we include the table of contents and list the tribbers? Telesilla 04:16, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

The zine page I glanced at when writing up Shonen Hump had all that info. I...can't remember now what zine it was! But at least some people are doing it that way. --Kyuuketsukirui 04:38, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

I think that would be a great idea, and I'll be doing that for the TOS zines wherever I can, after making basic stub pages. One thing to keep in mind is the danger of inadvertently outing someone who wrote under their real name; this may not be a problem in recent fandoms, but for the TOS zines, I will use first name + Initial ('Mary C.') and not the full author name, unless that author is online and still using the full name publicly. --Mary Crawford 06:45, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Yeah -- when I flung a preliminary page up for Crossroads using the original flyer, I left in fan pseuds that I knew were pseuds but cut anything that looked real-name-ish down to first name only, just in case. But I *love* having the story info available! --Arduinna 07:19, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't know if this is the right place for this suggestion, but there needs to be a way to skip from one page to another in this section without hitting "next 200" or "previous 200". Mrs. Potato Head 20:57, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

subcategories showing

Why some fandom zines and not others? I don't see Man from Uncle or Starsky and Hutch zines (to name two) on this subcategory list at the top. Is that the way it's supposed to be? --Mrs. Potato Head 13:36, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

If they are not showing, they haven't been tagged with the zines category. Let me check. ETA: Should be fixed now. They were just tagged as [[Category:Zines]]. I fixed this by changing it to [[Category:Zines|*Starsky & Hutch Zines]], etc. --Doro 13:52, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

You're a wizard! --Mrs. Potato Head 16:33, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

siphon off subcategories?

This category is massive, and I would love to see a way of breaking it up into more browsable sections. Are there any easily identifiable types of zines that could get their own subcategory and template? Say, newsletter zines or letterzines or just nonfiction zines or ... something. Some type of zine that otherwise gets buried under the avalanche of Star Trek/Professionals/Beauty and the Beast fanfiction zines?--æthel 16:04, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I like this idea.

Ex: Zines (main category with its own template)

Zines: newsletters/letterzines (one type of generic zine subcategory with its own template)

Zines: resource guides (another type of generic zine subcategory ith its own template)

Zines: poetry (a type of generic zine subcategory ith its own template)

Zines: calendars (not too sure about whether this fits)

We still need fandom categories to tie the zines back to their fandom. If the fandom ends up with more than 20 speciality zines, then we could always break the fandom zines into their own groups (like we do for Star Trek novels, Star Trek anthology).

+a separate fandom category applied to each zine. --FanloreFan 16:41, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, this! (Though Calendars are currently not considered zines and are categorized under Print Media, so I don't think we need to worry about them for the moment.) My thinking is that these format subcategories would be sorted under a different symbol, like #, to keep them distinct from the fandom subcategories that are cross-listed under Zines. And, say, a Star Wars letterzine page would get both the the Letterzine category and the Star Wars Zines category, but not the Zines main category. Under this scheme, a Quantum Leap fiction zine would still be categorized under Zines and Quantum Leap Zines.

We don't have explicitly defined naming conventions for categories, but I think we'd want to end up with names like "Newsletters and Letterzines" rather than "Zines: newsletters/letterzines".--æthel 17:05, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

At the risk of perhaps creating a lot more work than anyone necessarily wanted, it seems to me that this question may have multiple answers. That is: unless sub-Categories are more inflexibly hierarchical than I'd expect them to be, there may be more than one way to usefully divide a large swath of Zine pages into more manageable groups -- and a given page might reasonably be assigned to several different but equally valid subcategories.)

For example, one could create subcategories by publication dates (1970s, 1980s, 1990s). One could create genre-based subcategories (Zines: spy dramas; Zines: medical dramas; Zines: Westerns), though some of these might be more useful than others -- "Zines: sci-fi" is almost certainly unworkable. One might create at least some subcategories by story type (I strongly suspect that "Zines: crossovers" is viable, though "Zines: hurt/comfort" may not be). In a few cases, actor-specific zine subcategories might be workable (maybe "Zines: Peter Wingfield characters"?).

For the most part, these don't strike me as the sort of subcategories that would need separate templates. However, I can think of one subclass of zines for which a template might be helpful: clubzines, or those published/sponsored by organizations (for example, "Queen's Own" zines out of Misty Lackey fandom, some of the classic-era Doctor Who clubzines). --djonn 17:44, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I really like the idea of having story genre and date categories, but these are beyond the current scope of the category structure and would therefore require some planning. For instance, we could decide to assign a decade category to all fanworks listed on the wiki (there are more than 8000!) and create subcategories under each decade for zines, vids, filk, etc. That would be a massive undertaking and require a whole new category hierarchy. Which we can do if it makes sense. But not today!--æthel 19:10, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I had a feeling I was proposing an awfully big project there; OTOH, at least the "club/organization zine" suggestion is a little less sweeping in scope.  :-) --djonn 19:19, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I'd suggest something a bit more manageable for now - a letterzine/newsletter zine, a clubzine and possibly a resource zine category. That'll help clean up the main Zine category wothout having us retag all the zines.--FanloreFan 02:37, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

draft plan for new categories

Based on the above comments, this is what I'm thinking we could do for the zine subcategories:

Zines

Newsletters and Letterzines (cross-categorized under Non-fiction Writing)

Resource Zines (cross-categorized under Non-fiction Writing)

Clubzines

Poetry Zines (cross-categorized under Poetry)?

Anthology Zines? (cross-categorized under Fiction Writing)

Novel Zines? (cross-categorized under Fiction Writing)

I have a few questions: Would letterzines include APAs? Is there another term for "resource zines"? (I'm guessing this category would include concordances, print episode guides, adzines, credit zines, ...?). And I'm not sure about poetry zines; lots of fiction zines also have poetry, but how many poetry-only zines are there?

Since we've already got templates for anthology and novel zines, we could add separate subcategories for those, too. They're both intended for fiction zines, right? Are there any other types of zines that might still need to use these templates once we create the other categories and templates listed above?

This structure could free up the main zine category for glossary terms and more general historical overview/analytical type pages about zines, as well as those "list of" pages. And! The Fiction Writing category could be freed up as well! (I have been gazing mournfully at the giant fiction writing category for some time now.) What say you?--æthel 00:51, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes letterzines would include APAs. We don't have a term (or I can't remember one) for all the 'resource zines' - but I think it works as a description for the grouping. There will be overlap with some clubzines and newsletter/letterzines and you should have a plan on how to handle that. I agree that there are not a lot of petry zines - but perhaps they could fit into Anthologies? There are a lot of poetry zines in BatB fandom [Category:Beauty and the Beast Poetry Zines].

There may still be an odd zine that will not fit into the subcategories listed above. Normally I'd say we should have a 'catch-all' zine template to cover those, but there's always the risk of it being mis-applied.

The heirarchy needs to be visible - there needs to be the ability to click on one category and then see all the above and those below at a glance to help guide you where to place the zine you are working on. For example when I click on [Category:Sentinel_Zines] I see both gen and slash as an option. If I am deep inside [Category:Sentinel_Gen_Zines] I can back up by clicking at the bottom on [Category:Sentinel_Zines] and again see the overview. Does that make sense?

Last, I'd love to hear MPH's input since she's been doing a lot of the zine data entry. --FanloreFan 01:11, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're getting at re:hierarchies. I can see that the Zine cat already has 27 fandom subcategories, so we'd have to set the new subcats apart (by sorting under a different symbol, I think), and we can certainly add an explanation of how the zine categories work to this page. Is that what you're asking for?--æthel 01:48, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

I think when we started talking about seperating fic from nonfic I was under the impression that that all zines would no longe be listed under the single zine umbrella.

What I'd like to see is this

If you click on Category: Zine, you see all the subcategories that you could apply to a zine in one place. This would allow you to pick and choose the right one.

Example

Newsletters and Letterzines

Resource Zines

Clubzines

Poetry Zines

Anthology Zines?

Novel Zines?

If I click on Category: Zines:newsletters I would see all newsletters across all fandoms. I would also see a link back up to the main zine category (just like I do on the fandom specific zine pages. ex Sentinel Gen zines have a link at the bottom to the Sentinel zines category page). a few fandoms might also have their own fandom specific zine categories (like [Category:Sentinel_Newsletter_Zines], but they'd all have the Category: Zines:Newsletters label.

So a Sentinel newsletter could end up with a possible 3 cross-categorizations

Category: Zine: Newsletter

Category: Sentinel Zine: Newsletter

Category: Non-fiction Writing --FanloreFan 02:09, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

I think when we started talking about seperating fic from nonfic I was under the impression that that all zines would no longe be listed under the single zine umbrella. --FanloreFan 05:15, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

I think we're envisioning the same thing: lots of individual zine pages in the new subcategories, few or none in the main zine category. yes?

Once we've created the category structure, the wiki software automatically displays subcategories in the "Subcategories" list and parent categories at the bottom of the page. So we don't need to worry about that.

On any given newsletter zine page, the following categories should appear at the bottom of the page: "Fanworks" "Newsletters and Letterzines" "[Fandom] Zines/Newsletters/whatever" The page would NOT appear in "Non-fiction Writing" because "Newsletters and Letterzines" would be a subcategory of Non-fiction Writing also.--æthel 02:46, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Onto another tangent: a good place to look at the types of zines and how they might fit into the new subcategories is [Category:Blake's_7_Non-fiction_Zines] along with the top level [Category:Blake's 7 Zines].

Ex: The Avon Club Newsletter is both a clubzine and a newsletter (reporting on things beyond the club). It also contains fiction and poetry. Then we have this mysterious zine Scorpio Gun Clip Instruction. On the top level we have the Blake's Seven Christmas Filksongbook and Restal's Rules of Order. But these exceptions aside I found the pages helpful when creating mental groupings. Talking about categories without real examples is a bit beyond me, so I am hoping you will get better feedback from others. --FanloreFan 05:15, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

I forgot about coloring books! I think it's okay if coloring book zines and cookbooks would still be left in the main zine cat; there aren't too many of them, though we could still create separate categories for them. (Are filk songbooks always zines?)

Your clubzine example makes me think we won't need a clubzine template--if a clubzine will always also be a type of newsletter or fiction anthology, then we could simply add the clubzine category in addition to the newsletter or anthology template. (?) But this example has me worried--Oracle (Blake's 7 interview zine). Is it a resource zine? Or something else? Maybe we need another level of categories, like this:

Zines

Non-fiction Zines

Newsletters and Letterzines +

Resource Zines +

Clubzines

Poetry Zines

Anthology Zines +

Novel Zines +

(Actor Zines?)

+ has separate template

Note: I do think we need to do something to spare the main Fiction Writing category from being flooded by 7000 fiction zines.

--æthel 05:57, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm. The sitemap page already says that for individual fan creations, one should go to Fanworks, which implicitly suggests that an individual fanwork should not be assigned Fiction Writing as a category. At a very quick glance, I'm not sure how consistently that's been implemented sitewide, but it's a valid distinction, and if an individual fanfic doesn't count as Fiction Writing, then a given zine shouldn't either.

That said, a look at the Sitemap suggests that either that page or the Category hierarchy itself needs some updating, because the logic the Sitemap uses suggests to me that Fanworks ought to occupy a space at the same hierarchical level as Fan Activities and Fan Communities, where in fact, Fanworks isn't in the hierarchy at all (it's basically a footnote in Fan Activities). The way the Sitemap is organized, my impression is that Activities is for general description and process, Communities is for...well, communities, and Fanworks is -- or should be -- for the works themselves. If this were made explicit, Zines would be one Category in the main level under Fanworks, and individual fics would be another.

Ultimately, I'm not sure that it's entirely possible, in a strictly hierarchical Category structure on a large and steadily growing wiki, to keep the top-level Categories from becoming vast and containing multitudes. This is, after all, a variation on the same problem that broke the first-gen Yuletide code; the exchange got popular, the database got huger, and people kept wanting to find things in it....

Which is not meant to be discouraging, really. As noted, I think the solution to not overwhelming "Fiction Writing" per se is fairly straightforward. The problem of how to subdivide 7000 zine pages? If Yuletide is the precedent, the answer to that one may be "fiercer code" rather than trying to arm-wrestle Categories into submission.

--djonn 06:59, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

The sitemap page already says that for individual fan creations, one should go to Fanworks, which implicitly suggests that an individual fanwork should not be assigned Fiction Writing as a category. But individual fanfic *is* categorized as Fiction Writing, just as individual vids are categorized as Vidding and individual fanart is categorized as Visual Art. --Doro 10:29, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

<pokes further around wiki> Hmmm. It looks as if I managed to hit the world's worst micro-sample when I went looking last night. I checked The Shoebox Project (labeled, perhaps unwisely since it's multimedia, on the Fanworks page as its primary example of fanfic), and the Peter David entry from Quantum Beast (as I was trying to look specifically for individual works rather than zines, which the Fanworks index doesn't clearly distinguish). Neither of those are tagged with Fiction Writing as a category. However, a further rather erratic perusal of pages indexed at Fanworks this morning suggests that most of the zines/novels I found are categorized as Fiction Writing.

Also, one thing I didn't do last night (and probably should have) was to actually look at the index at the Fiction Writing Category page, which is already vast -- and, like the one at Fanworks, doesn't appear to distinguish between zines and individual works.

As it turns out, taken together, the Sitemap, Fanworks, and Fiction Writing pages conspired to confuse me. The top-level text on the Fanworks index page says that the page is intended to list "individual fanworks". The Fiction Writing index page doesn't have header text, just a note that there's one subcategory (Original Writing) -- which strikes me as odd, since logically Fanfiction (in the sense of "individual works of fanfic") would seem to be a corresponding parallel category, and if there's an index page explicitly for Zines (which there is) and one for Original Fiction (which there is), there ought to be an index page for Fanfiction (which there isn't). Or so says my brain in "thinking like a user" mode, anyhow. A further minor complication is the feature/bug wherein index pages will only ever tell one that there are 200 pages (or sometimes 199 or 187 or some such on the first page of a multipage index) in the Category, so that one can't easily tell at a glance how big the given index really is.

Circling back to the actual question of how to organize all this: at the Sitemap level, I still think it makes sense to class Fanworks (i.e. individual works, as its index page says) as a top-level Category rather than a "floating" one. One reason: I tend to think of a Zine as an artifact, rather than a story (and my personal experience of zines is skewed strongly toward anthology/serial!zines rather than novel!zines). A look at the index pages suggests that -- somewhat contrary to my invocation of Yuletide last night -- large numbers of pages in a Category may not create an insurmountable problem. So what's missing is that index page for Fanfiction (i.e. the stories) as opposed to Zines (i.e. the artifacts).

Which to some extent raises a question of policy-paradox: there's policy that says Fanlore isn't about indexing every fanfic story ever written...but OTOH, we're devoting a lot of effort toward indexing every zine we can find. To the extent that novel!zines constitute a sizeable chunk of the zine continuum, that looks a little peculiar.

--djonn 16:32, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

In that case, I will go into the Fiction Writing cat page and add a note that individual fanfics are (currently) added to that category. I think the original category setup didn't anticipate that fanworks would be cross-categorized under the fan activities subcats (Fiction Writing), but that's the way we've been doing it. "Fiction Writing" was, I believe, intended to be a generic name in case some fan communities didn't use the word "fanfiction" (e.g. Sherlock Holmes pastische). It would be nice to break out a subcategory for "online fanfiction" or something--right now, I'd say there's a recentism/Internet fandom bias, at least in the sitemap.

A "floating" category is a de-facto top-level category, but with no subcategories. Weirdly, even though "Fanworks" is supposed to be floating, it's actually a subcat, which I think was a mistake, though maybe Fanworks is easier to find that way. I can change it to a top-level cat and add it to the Browse menu in the sidebar if that will help.--æthel 17:41, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

I've also added a note that multi-story zines are not to be in the Fiction Writing category, in response to artefact idea for fanfiction. Single story zines were an element of fanfiction, and therefore go in Fiction Writing. All zines still belong in the Category:Zines cat, which IIRC is under Category:Fanworks. awils1 06:51, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Once we've implemented the zine subcategory/template plan, neither novel zines nor fiction anthologies should appear in the Fiction Writing category -- there will be a subcategory under Fiction Writing for them ("Anthology Zines" [or "Fiction Anthologies"?] and Novel Zines).--æthel 07:02, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Unless there are a lot of "anthology" tags already lying around the wiki, I'd actually suggest something like Zines (Short Fiction) and Zines (Novel). My thought is simply that fandom got the "zine" label from "magazine" (a periodical or serial), whereas "anthology" is a term borrowed from book publishing. This also avoids confusion between shortfic!zines and the Very Small Handful of actual book-type anthologies of fanfic or semi-fanfic (I am thinking of the Marshak/Culbreath Star Trek: The New Voyages books and the much later Strange New Worlds volumes from Pocket). --djonn 07:32, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

As a matter of fact, there are a lot of zines that are tagged as anthologies already. We've sorted some of the big zine fandoms by Novel/Anthology. See Category:Star Trek TOS Gen and Het Anthology Zines, Category:Beauty and the Beast Anthology Zines. --Doro 09:29, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough, then; established usage definitely trumps wishful thinking in a case like this one. --djonn 09:40, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, I'm not a fan of Zines (Short Fiction), because that to me is applying length to something that may well be quite big. I'd prefer anthology, as that incorporates multiple works in the one publication, which is what we're talking about. Zine (Novel) on the other hand, is for zines that were published as one piece. --awils1 08:43, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

WHAT WE GOT SO FAR

Category:Zines (ETA: Template:Zine)

Category:Newsletters & Letterzines (Template:ZineNewsletter) - nonfiction

Category:Resource Zines (Template:ZineResource) - nonfiction

Category:Anthology Zines (Template:ZineAnthology) - fiction

Category:Novel Zines (Template:ZineNovel) - fiction

Category:Poetry Zines (Template:ZinePoetry) - poetry

Category:Club Zines (no template) - could be fiction or nonfiction or both

Any zine that doesn't fit into one of the above categories will have to use the fanworks template (unless we create a catch-all zine template). Please note that although a page can get only one template, it can have more than one of these categories if needed. Types of zines so far not covered: art portfolio zines (I saw one), coloring books, Tolkien Journal (print meta?), a few puzzle zines (e.g. Puzzle Palace), cookbooks, and zines that don't have enough info to classify them yet. Am I missing anything else?--æthel 16:52, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

It looks pretty good. The only one that makes me nervous is clubzines. It's the only one that's based on who publishes it as opposed to its content. Also, it can be really hard to tell if if a zine is a clubzine. And then, clubzines tend to have A LOT of overlap with the other ones (though not novel and poetry). I wonder if it would be better to have "club zine?" in the templates of the other ones? --Mrs. Potato Head 17:19, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I think I was the one who mentioned clubzines first (probably because I was remembering, at the time, that I edited one for a very small Doctor Who group umpty-mumble years ago). You're exactly right that "clubzine" differentiates based on source rather than on content -- and by extension, that clubzines may incorporate content encompassing most of the other content-derived Categories. (Mine had newsletter content, episode commentary, fiction, and puzzles.) But while clubzines almost certainly don't need a content-specific template (I suspect most would use either the newsletter or resource zine templates), I think they're a zine type that does deserve to be grouped for search/indexing/browsing purposes, and a Category seems to be the best way to accomplish that. --djonn 17:44, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, exactly what Djonn said. There should be a way to search for them or sort them out, but a template for them would be problematic. --Mrs. Potato Head 18:00, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I went ahead and made the generic zine template. See above.--æthel 20:03, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

fanworks category idea

Transplanting this out to first-level in hopes of attracting more input -- here's how (I think) my observations in the threads above might impact the Sitemap. To the current four-point subheadings under 1.2, I'd add a fifth for Fanworks, giving us:

1.2.1 Fan Activities

1.2.2 Fan Communities

1.2.3 People

1.2.4 Fanworks

1.2.5 Perspectives on Fans

I've stuck "Fanworks" in where I think it fits aesthetically, but the actual outline numbering is of minimal significance. (Aside to Aethel: yes, I think having "Fanworks" in the sidebar is probably a good idea.)

The actual Fanworks hierarchy might look something like this:

Fanworks

== Fanfiction (Works)

== Filk Music (Works)

== Multimedia (Works)

== Non-fiction Writing (Works)

== Original Fiction (Works)

== Vids

== Zines

I suggest the "(Works)" descriptor to distinguish Subcategory index pages from the corresponding glossary-entry pages; some of these can be shifted -- or simply relisted -- from the Fan Activities hierarchy. Note that I am discussing only the Sitemap's outline here; I don't mean to propose doing anything technically difficult to the code infrastructure if we don't have to.

Note that I don't propose to introduce a "Fiction Writing (Works)" subcategory under Fanworks; clearly, we don't need both "Fanfiction (Works)" and "Fiction Writing (Works)". Indeed, if it's technically possible, I'd suggest that the existing Fiction Writing index page be renamed to "Fanfiction (Works)" -- if that's workable, it might be a relatively painless way to greatly improve the clarity of the overall hierarchy in one swell foop.

Zine subcategories could then proceed under any of the subcategory schemes proposed upstream -- novel!zines would also be Fanfiction (Works), critical!zines could be Non-fiction Writing (Works), etc. OTOH, I would tend to resist filing anthology!zines as Fanfiction (Works) -- as I have argued in the upthreads, I think of the zine as the artifact vs. individual stories in the zine as "works". But that may or may not be practical depending on current implementations. --djonn 19:05, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

I suggest the "(Works)" descriptor to distinguish Subcategory index pages from the corresponding glossary-entry pages; some of these can be shifted Why would we do that? Categories can have the same name as a normal wiki article, there is no need for disambiguation. --Doro 19:13, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

<Johnny Carson voice> I did not know that.</Johnny Carson voice> If "Category: Fanfiction" (etc.) is inherently distinguishable from "Fanfiction", then yes, that gets us to mostly the same place as "Fanfiction (Works)" (etc.). OTOH, I do think that there's sometimes merit in maximum clarity of labels. And in the longer term, we may run into an instance where it makes sense to have more than two high-level Categories covering an area: perhaps "Fanfiction (Works)", "Fanfiction (Process)", and "Fanfiction (Criticism)". (My outlining instinct is to build this kind of outline with deliberate room for expansion....) --djonn 19:56, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Before anyone gets too excited, I just wanted to point out that this would be a major change and require a whole new set of templates, clean up of thousands of pages, plus committee approval. But the zine subcategory/subtemplate project would actually make an eventual Fanworks project more manageable.--æthel 20:07, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I might have had a heart attack when I first read this. The amount of work! but it's a good idea.--æthel 20:13, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

<nodnodnod> Yup, definitely big/long-term thinking here; I probably ought to have included a pillow for falling over onto. :-) OTOH, if some of it can be finessed by creative relabeling, that will be to the good. [All this is making me flex brain muscles I haven't used in years, back in another life when I was building Windows Help files.] --djonn 20:23, 22 September 2010 (UTC)