Fanlore talk:Categories

Can we have a "List" category? List of archives, of book fandoms, of BNFs (or at least, of "fans" and "pro authors," not mutually exclusive), of fanfic awards, of TV shows, of zines, of recurring fanfic challenges, etc? I can think of several fannish things that it'd be nice to mention in passing but might not need their own page. (Even given that "notability" here means "notability to fandom"... I'm not sure every zine ever created needs a page, but it'd be nice to have a list of all the ones people can scrounge up or remember, maybe separated by fandom.) --Elfwreck 17:58, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Would it perhaps work as a subpage of the parent concept? You know, zines/list of zines ? --Betty 19:29, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I like that. I haven't figured out how to make subpages yet. It would also involve making main pages for various tropes. (Not a bad idea, just not being done yet, I think.) --Elfwreck 22:44, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I tried to make a sub-page, and suspect that I screwed it up. I wanted to make Celebrity RPG a sub-page to Role-Playing Game, but it doesn't seem to work. http://fanlore.org/wiki/Role-Playing_Game/Celebrity_RPG Could someone tell me a) if this is a good idea and if so b) how to do it correctly? Ta! -- Msilverstar 06:50, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

You did it right, by adding a slash after the name of the parent page. Look at the top of your new page Role-Playing_Game/Celebrity_RPG and you will see there's an automatic breadcrumb link back to the parent.--anatsuno 08:03, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

It's a little weird seeing my changes to Help:Categories show up here. Is there any policy of making that more clear, when you include another page? -- Msilverstar 18:42, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I added redirects from Categorization, Catigorisation, Categorize and Categorise, because the search results for those words were dreadful. Now they go directly to this page. But a search for "Category" is still ridiculously bad. *goes & returns* OK, now have disambiguation pages for Category and Categories. Multi-word search results now tolerable. -- Msilverstar 19:03, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Why include all broader categories?

I've read through this and I'm afraid I still don't understand the reasoning for including broader categories instead of just the most narrow. It seems to me that makes all but the narrowmost categories too cluttered to be easily usable. -- Kdcat 00:43, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm not 100% sure what you mean, but if you mean, why have both "Fan Activities" as well as "fanfic" "fanart" "vidding" "activism" in the category tree... I assume it is to have the hierarchy so that you don't have to scroll through long lists if you don't know the exact term used here for whatever you are looking for, but can descend downward step by step. Like the categories in library catalogs or something, there the top ones are really broad too?--Ratcreature 01:17, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

I'd say the category tree isn't the problem, just the application of broad categories to individual pages where a more specific category applies. Basically, when you look at the Fan Activities category page, you'll see millions of pages. Showing all levels of categories might be useful when you are looking at the page itself, but not when you're looking at the category page. By the way, why do we need to add the whole hierarchy of categories manually? Can't the wiki just automatically add the relevant broad categories when an editor adds the most specific one?--Aethel 01:27, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure how they do it, but one Marvel Wiki (on Mediawiki) has some way of showing the full category tree but the article is only in the narrowest category: Example of this in an article brought up at http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Transformers_Wiki_talk:Community_Portal#Category_tree -- Kdcat 05:58, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

which categories apply?

Months of using this wiki and the category structure still confuses me. What categories are supposed to go on pages for characters? Usually they now don't have any category, because the media they come from (e.g. Television) gets deleted, as well as putting it in "fan community" which I can see is not the best fit, but I suppose is a desperate attempt to fit them *somewhere* and they are about the fandom for a character after all. If there currently is no category that could fit for character and pairing pages the category tree is just lacking and messed up, because it is one of the most common type of page and they can't be meant to fit nowhere in the internal organization, and if there is one but nobody can figure out which is it, that's messed up too, come to think of it. I vaguely remember a discussion or proposal somewhere about a category for pairings, but that was a while ago and nothing seems to have come of it.

Similarly, I think I asked this elsewhere on one of the many talk pages (Fanlore talk:Sitemap I think) a while ago, and never got an explanation, I still don't understand the difference between "debate" and "discussion" categories. The examples are no help, because one of the examples given under "Category: Debate" is "Meta" but "Meta" got actually sorted into the "Category: Discussion" on the site map, so the site's instructions aren't even consistent. It seems discussion communities are right now mostly put in the discussion category except for "stilljewish" (even though in the example "Fanthropoly" is given for the "debate" category) , and discussion topics are put in either? I mean, "debate" and "discussion" are rather overlapping as far as terms go, so it's no wonder that there is no clear pattern for what goes where, but why do both these categories exist in the first place? Why not merge "debate" into discussion? Or have one category for discussion communities and one for discussion topics if the category needs to be split?--Ratcreature 05:47, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I second your confusion - I'm still a bit confused myself on the difference between Fan Community and Fan Activity, when so many things get listed as both - the Template:CommunityProfile for instance puts a comm automatically in both categories, which seems contradictory, to me? I guess it's because fan activity happens in fan communities, but... --Xparrot 19:58, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I third the "debate"/"discussion" confusion and think we ought to have Character and Pairing categories as well.--Aethel 01:53, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Character and Pairing were originally going to be special categories that could be used anywhere, but that hasn't been implemented yet, and I have to do more investigation to find out the specifics of how we can do that. The other issues I think should be thrown out to the gardener list to discuss, as the wiki committee hasn't yet re-formed. I think we can go with general consensus on most of this. --rache 15:13, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I've been looking at how different pages have been categorized in practice--it looks like "discussion" has been interpreted as 1. any ongoing topic of discussion in fandom, 2. potentially any type of discussion forum (usenet, message boards, listservs, though not usually lj comms for some reason), and 3. vocabulary related to fan discussion practices. But this isn't consistently implemented. "Debate" appears to be a euphemism for a flamewar or wank, but could also include any civilized discussion in fandom. If this is the intent, then we probably don't need to apply the "discussion" label to ongoing debates/discussions--aethel 03:47, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Unless "discussion" is meant to identify the purpose of the listservs, lj comms, and newsgroups, rather than the infrastructure itself. Meaning fanfiction newsgroups shouldn't get the discussion category. Whoops.--aethel 04:14, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Simple category instructions: After Categories Get Revamped

I came back and tried to use categories and I can't remember how they should go. This Categories page covers too much ground, theory, some examples, and then meta (adding categorization).

In the Wiki spirit, I'd like to write a "How to Add Categories" page, simplified and with tons of examples. But I'm going to need people to double-check me, as I'm not the least bit sure I am getting them right. Anyone up for it? --Msilverstar 18:39, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Apparently the categories are changing -- I will wait until after that to write the simple intro --Msilverstar 23:55, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Cross-categorisation

I still find this confusing. Here it says the Archive of Our Own could be categorised in Category:Fiction Writing and also Category:Websites, however, the page right now has the categories Category: Websites, Category:Fan Communities and Category:Archives. Apparently Fan Communities is wrong and it should be Fiction Writing instead. I get that. But why should it be Websites instead of Archives? o_O --Doro 23:21, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

I should have been paying closer attention. It should be Archives, NOT Websites. I will change it.--æthel 23:37, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

"multifandom" category?

Any chance we could have a Category:Multifandom to add to things like meta-ish communities like Halfamoon, Ship Manifesto etc.; multifandom multireccer communities like Crack Van and Fancake; multifandom challenge communities like the Kaleidoscope Fanwork Exchange, Werewolf Big Bang, Vampire Big Bang, etc. etc., to make those easier to find for people who'd like to find communities and challenges explicitly designed to be multifandom? --Sk 21:38, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

As per Talk:Multifandom, we didn't think it would be worth it, though we're happy to revisit it in the new year (the OTW term has ended, and we're kind of exhausted):

It makes sense for archives and challenges (if there are enough), which contain/produce fanworks in multiple fandoms. But I don't think it's worth labelling discussion forums that are not fandom-specific as "multifandom." Something like virgule, fanficrants, or the vidding lj comm aren't really about all the fandoms that get mentioned there; they're about acafannishness, bad fanfiction, or vidding. Likewise, the resource zines about making zines or Fandom on the Internet are about Fandom or a Fan Activity and shouldn't be categorized in Multimedia Zines.--æþel 23:56, 12 January 2011 (UTC) --Awils1 03:50, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

I hadn't seen the discussion there, thanks for pointing it out. Maybe table for at least now and perhaps quick revisit in February or Marchish, to see how many fanlore pages there are at that point that might fit into a multifandom discussion/meta/recs community and/or challenge category, and/or check if there is or still isn't critical mass or clear need for it? --Sk 06:55, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

What category would these go in?

Today I've made several new pages for apps/plugins/tools that assist with finding/reading fanfiction in some way: AO3rdr, AO3 Savior, Flipper Fanfiction Recommendation Engine, Scryer (fanfiction search engine). What category would be appropriate? --Assassin J (talk) 19:33, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

I want to also say that there are some userscripts I've been wanting to make pages for like the Fanfiction.net review citation script that's linked on my profile, the userscript I have that makes indexing fanfiction.net forum posts easier, and the AnonBU scripts that turn anonymous users on gdocs and DW into ANBU names, but I haven't been sure how to categorize those, either. - Hoopla (talk) 20:29, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

Category:Fan Activities, maybe? -- Kingstoken (talk) 20:35, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

How about Category:Software Tools? I would like to add Filtering Tools, if that cateogry is created. Potpotkettle (talk) 13:24, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

I don't have any advice on the naming or organizing of such a category, but there's some tools for the worm fandom that might belong there as well -- Worm Story Search is one we already have a page on & I believe there's a few others. -- Quaelegit (talk) 04:04, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

https://fichub.net/ probably ought to go in this category too, maybe i'll make a page for it later. -- Quaelegit (talk) 04:08, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

aethel suggested "Fannish Coding" and "Fannish Software" in Discord. "Fannish Coding" sounds better as a subcategory of Category:Fan Activities than the other candidates. I think whether if the new category should be a subcategory of Fan Activities is a different matter, though. Would a new top-level category be too much? Potpotkettle (talk) 05:26, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Websites is a subcategory of Fan Activities, and writing software is an activity, so whether it's phrased as an action or the product of the action I think it belongs under Fan Activities. Creating it as a new fan activity subcategory also provides more flexibility to add more kinds of pages on fannish coding in general, not just pages that describe a specific tool. (Is there a page on how fans use github? userscripts? skins? The ADT committee page could also fit in there.)--aethel (talk) 01:55, 15 March 2023 (UTC)