Fanlore talk:Editorial Procedures

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Hey. I just wanted to ask if it was possible to offset the non-arbitration of relevance in section 6 The Relevance of Content with the idea of the *suitability* of content -- as it stands now, the section can be misunderstood as 'anything whatsoever goes', and it might be helpful to add a little reminder 'please ask yourself if the content you are about to add is in any way relevant to fandom, since Fanlore is a resource for Once and Future Fans (j/k). Please see 'What Fanlore is not' to find out about suitable content.' I mean, I was looking around for *any* limitations on content, and there is literally none to be found except when digging deep on Deceptive Practices and on What Fanlore Is Not, and I think it would be good to integrate this better to prevent misunderstandings. --lian 10:54, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Repetitive Internal Links

I have a question about internal linking policies. On the page it says please make the first occurrence of each in your own article an internal link and at the same time it says We encourage editors to use internal links to other pages on the wiki wherever the opportunity arises. Right now it looks like most people follow the "wherever the opportunity arises" idea with multiple internal links for the same thing in the same article. Most often there are internal links in the template for all the fandoms a person has been active in and then the internal links for the fandoms are used in the main text of the article as well. If almost every word in a text is an internal link, it reduces readability for me a lot. Could we have a rule that the template counts as a "first occurrence" and that everything that is already linked there doesn't get repetitive linkage in the main text?--Doro 09:08, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to argue the opposite -- I think it's important that the first instance in the text be linked, even if the term is in the infobox, because I don't think readers are going to think to look up at the infobox while they're reading, and because the link in the text is what conveys most clearly that there's more information available about the topic being discussed. I agree that there don't need to be multiple links of the same word to the same article within the text, though. --Penknife 11:38, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
I think where it annoys me the most is on people pages where the info box lists twenty fandoms for a person and the main text says basically "She wrote in (include list of twenty fandoms)".--Doro 13:07, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
Personally I like that, as I don't think there should be information in the info box which is not also in the main text: I usually skip over info boxes when reading articles (although not so much on Fanlore as on other wikis, which I put down to something indefinible but good about the design here). I guess my feeling is that the infobox is a summary, not a section. -- Kdcat 17:04, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
I think that is a misuse of the infobox more than a failure of internal linking. The infobox should contain the major fandoms, the text should expand on that. I kind of have a mixed approach: if the article is fairly long, I will sometimes wikilink the same word again, but on the other hand, I'm just stopping by from a duplicate-wikilink-removal-romp in 200-work-articles, so I definitely see your point. *goes on rampage again* --lian 18:07, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

The single author naming practice

I wanted to bring up that I'm slightly bothered by the current practice that in fanzine novels that as a zine object are collaborations betweenauthor and artist, only the author seems to "count" when it comes to naming the article for the zine, no matter how elaborate or well regarded the art is. I mean, sure, if there is no notable art, or someone just used a screencap for a zine cover and it is text otherwise, but I don't think it is fair that if a zine has for example many full page illustrations and an elaborate cover it counts for nothing as far as "authorship" of the fanwork is concerned. I think fanzine novels that are significantly illustrated should have article names of the pattern "title - author & artist" if the artist is known and not just filed under the author of the text part.--Ratcreature 23:01, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

I am totally for doing "title - author & artist" on zines that are heavily illustrated! I think that would rock; you're totally right, for novels/novellas that are illustrated, the art is absolutely part a huge part of the whole zine experience. --Arduinna 03:06, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Aside from this artist issue, I find the single author zine naming thing really, really hard to navigate (pages getting named without authors when the author isn't known, pages getting named with both full names and partial names as per the 1995 rule, the whole issue of an author later "giving permission" to use a full name and not being savvy or determined enough to sign up and then in to Fanlore to make the change...) and very confusing to create, much less search with the way the odd and incomplete searching system (see below). Personally, I'd leave all authors off to make it simpler to search and as well as be accurate when adding. Besides, a zine with a single author isn't necessarily "more noteworthy" than one with two or more authors. JMO

In the same vein, the word "creator" on the zine template is confusing. The creator could be the author, the publisher, the artist. Sometimes I put the publisher and then make note of the other info in the text. Sometimes all I have is an author and then put that in the creator line. In any case, its far, far from consistent. Perhaps change the template to: AUTHOR and PUBLISHER/ISSUER and ARTIST and one can go from there?

That brings me to the searching function which I've found confounding. It has NO margain for error in mistyping; get a single letter wrong and you're toast. Sometimes I'll get a hit with typing in one or two words and then sometimes I get a hit only when typing the full title. Sometimes a tiny variation will make the search successful, sometimes not. More often than not, I'm stymied by what I consider really obvious searches, I end up trying to recreate what I did to find the page I'm looking for (for instance typing in the fandom and the word fanzine or zine often gets me nowhere and that should be such standard thing.) I have a whole section of goofball workarounds bookmarked which is pretty bad. All in all, I feel like I'm duplicating, missing and messing up stuff that that should have displayed when it didn't.

Just my two cents worth for three issues. Mrs. Potato Head 23:37, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

The search completely sucks. Because of it having no tolerance, I sometimes can't even find pages that I know are there and know the approximate title and content, simply because I don't remember the exact title.
And I totally agree with the template issue. I think the main problem is that the general "fanwork" template just isn't adequate for zines. A zine specific template with fields better adjusted to zine specific collaboration (editor, publisher, author and artist fields) would be much better, but I don't know how to create new templates.
I'd be fine with zine being generally being regarded as a group effort with no author in the article name, too, that certainly would save a bunch of extra renaming and moving work that now happens when you find the author later on in some other zine index or on the publisher page, but initially the info wasn't available. But the current exclusive fixation on the author IMO disregards that artwork is a big part of some of these zines, even if only one writer was involved.--Ratcreature 23:54, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
ETA: wrt search, when I whined about that on the fanlore DW comm recently, someone told me that looking for better options ans search plugins had been added to the "issues" list: http://fanlore.org/wiki/Fanlore:Issues#TECH so it's apparently on the agenda to make this thing more functional.--Ratcreature 00:15, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
They're using the Fanlore:Bug_Tracking page now to track bugs, issues, etc., and it looks like the search plugin idea has been added as promised for someone to look into.
Re: a zine template, yeah, I've been thinking for a while that we needed one, but I wasn't sure how specific we should make fanwork templates. Still, I'll take a whack at it. (Oy, the re-templating of all these zines, though. *g*) --Arduinna 03:06, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
ETA: I forgot to say, the reason for using the author name on novels in the first place is because often zines go online, and it makes no sense to have the page be for "Winter's End" when it's a zine, but "Winter's End - Ellis Ward" after it gets uploaded (if nothing else, it's also still a zine at the same time). Or to use an actual example, Never Let Me Down - Shoshanna is a zine that people still own and that can be bought through zine sales, but is up online in two different places as well. --Arduinna 04:54, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
It makes me shiver as well. There's no way I could go back and re-code all that. I think I'd rather be dead. And I mean that in a really non-confrontational, positive sort of way... *wink* Mrs. Potato Head 03:40, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
The author name isn't added to show that a zine is more noteworthy (and if a novel has two authors, or an author or an artist, all the creators should be listed in the title). The author/artist/vidder name being added to the title is a way of doing a pre-emptive disambiguation across the board; many stories/songs/whathave you have identical titles, and we need to be able to tell them apart. It's not just for zines (and in fact didn't start with zines), but for any individual fanwork - story, artwork, filk, vid, poem, whatever. If there's more than one with the same title, with only the author/artist/vidder/filker/etc. names being different, we can create a disambiguation line or page to point people at the different ones. An anthology zine with multiple authors can't easily be identified by all of them (because their names go with their individual stories); instead, it's identified by its fandom, by the fact that it's a zine, etc., if it needs to be disambiguated. The more things get added to the wiki, the more overlap there's going to be on titles, so the more work we can do to keep things unique from the getgo, the better. --Arduinna 03:06, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
I get that part of it.
But single author zines are no more susceptible to having duplicate titles than anthology ones. You could have "Confessions" by Bob Smith and "Confessions" by Wendy Smith. And you could have that same titled anthology zine in four different fandoms, disambiguation aside. No difference to the searching person.
It would have made as much sense to make the rule that all anthology zines are titled with the fandom and single author ones are left blank.
In the end, why not title *every* zine with its fandom on the get-go? Every single one. My opinion? EVERY zine gets titled with its fanzine in parenthesis. Or none of them are and the search engine is greatly improved. Mrs. Potato Head 03:40, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
The novel zines are being treated identically to every other individual fanwork on the wiki; it's not that anyone said "let's treat some zines differently than others", it's that a zine novel is like any other story, where a zine anthology is more like a small online archive, or a challenge, or something like that. For those things, the collective title is the umbrella title that gets used; for the stories (or vids, or art, or songs) collected within them, the individual naming convention gets used.
It's perfectly fine to default to putting (Zine) or (Fanzine) next to any zine title, or to put (Fandom Name Zine) or whatever -- go for it! There are plenty of zine names that will show up in multiple fandoms because the names aren't fandom-specific, and if you want to pre-emptively start making sure there are unique names for each, I'm totally behind that. We can create disambiguation pages for the base name (e.g., like the disambiguation page Crossroads, which already includes two zines, a mailing list, and an online collection of story links).
What we would need for your "Confessions" example is a disambiguation page that listed everything that could possibly fall under the umbrella of "confessions" (I made up everything but the reality show *g*):
The key is to make the disambiguation page (which honestly is very easy -- you create the page name (in this case, "Confessions"), you put the ((Disambiguation)) (except using curly brackets, not parens) template at the top, and you create a bulleted list with the various possible pages that people make look for under that name. That way a search on "Confession" will bring them to the right page, even if it takes one more click. For this example, we'd redirect "Confession" and "Confessional" to the "Confessions" page, so any variant got pointed to the main list.
What I don't want to see, though, is us treating zines differently than other fanworks in the wiki; there needs to be consistency, even if sometimes it's a pain. Don't sweat the details too much; make the best guess you can on what something should be, and if need be, someone will be along eventually to correct it. Everything in the wiki is fluid. :) --Arduinna 04:54, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
The problem is not that the official guidelines for zines preclude adding the artists, but that the default practice for fan novels we've fallen back to here now without even talking about it, is to count just the story of a novel. (eta: and I include myself in that, I've done the same when creating pages, just assuming the writer is who counts) I don't recall a single zine that was renamed as novel listing now the artists in the title unless they were also the writer. And to a point it is understandable that this happened, usually the title is the story's title, the writers are more often listed in zine lists than the artists and easier to find, frequently you know the story from being republished online but the art may not be (or not as easily found when fandoms have central fiction but not central art archives) etc. There is a prominence that is given to the fiction part which makes that count as the important thing rather than seeing the zine itself which had art as a collaboration. And I know this is sort of normal in fandom, but I still think it's not right.--Ratcreature 06:24, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
Yes, totally agreed! I mean, I think most zines weren't that heavily illustrated, but some definitely were, and the artwork is a crucial part of them that shouldn't be ignored in the page title. Like, for instance, Harlequin Airs in Pros -- Ellis Ward wrote it, but people remember it as much for Suzan Lovett's gorgeous covers and illos; they're a huge part of what makes that zine so special to Pros fandom. In fact, if I can get some time this weekend, I'll do that page and set it up with both names. --Arduinna 06:40, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
I think the naming convention of listing the zine with the author is a reflection of how it's done with books. In a library catalog, the author is always the main entry, even if the art or cover is far more memorable than the text. The artists then have their own lines of reference farther down record. Regardless of how the item is cataloged though, it should be able to be found with title and author as well as title and illustrator when searching by keyword. Maybe, when the contributor feels the art to be by a very well-known artist or is recognized as a seminal piece, the zine is cataloged under both with a re-direct? Just a thought. Mrs. Potato Head 12:26, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
I think zines are distinct from books though. Illustrations in non-children's books are rare. In comics, which are after all also art and text collaborations both writer and artist are listed. And granted most zines are not graphic story telling to the extent that comics are, but many still have more visual art than your average novel. I see no problem to do this like with co-authors that are currently both listed with an "&" inbetween in th title. The sucky search is really a separate issue. It's not that I feel all that dogmatic about this (e.g. I don't think it's all that important that already existing zines be moved around yet again), I just think it should be considered more, so that for example you'll occasionally see fanartists names when browsing through the fanworks catalog.--Ratcreature 12:41, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
No dogmatism for me either. I'm just going to keep loading things up as accurately as I can and hope that others with far more knowledge than I can sort it out. I mean, the zines I've actually ever held in my hands is about twenty, so what do I know? *grin* Mrs. Potato Head 13:54, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
Heh, still more than me. I own like three fanfic fanzines (though more comic related), but I'm totally becoming an expert through the internet and learning all kinds of fascinating stuff...--Ratcreature 14:10, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
I'm all about having someone *find* the right zine and then all the other stuff getting hashed out once she or he is there. In the end, I think my issue is with the searching functionality. It clouds up too many other things. :-{ Mrs. Potato Head 09:55, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Naming convention for Japanese fandoms

There's a discussion going on in Talk:Naruto/Sakura_Haruno about what order to use for the names of Japanese characters - whether to use Japanese order or Western order. There's a specific request from Anenko for an official policy: "Could we see some sort of official policy on Japanese name order? Whether fans use Japanese or Western name order depends on personal preference, scanlations, official translations, manga or anime, subs or dubs, etc. Should people worry about a consistent naming policy, or go on a fandom-by-fandom basis?" Can the wiki admins weigh in on this? ETA: I put this into Fanlore:Bug Tracking as well to make sure it got in the queue. --Arduinna 22:38, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

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