Talk:It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

PPOV ?

I've gone through and added some references but I have some concerns about the Fandom section.

1. Fan consensus on how actors may/may not behave seems irrelevant, especially when the editor says it doesn't relate to RPF. This seems like an opinion been presented as fanon, and I don't think it can be verified.
2. The last paragraph is heavily skewed toward the IASIP fandom on Tumblr. I changed "Sunny fandom is exclusively found on tumblr", to "Sunny fandom is almost exclusively found on tumblr." The next three sentences are fairly generic, but I don't think IASIP is popular on Tumblr, or ever was. Again, it's one person's perspective been presented as fact.

I was going to add separate Tumblr and Reddit sections to fandom, but I know nothing about the Tumblr fandom. And Reddit's perspective of Tumblr fans isn't always kind, so I'd just be giving another one sided perspective. See This comment, and this one. I'll add the PPOV tag to the page and maybe someone who's more actively involved with be able to sort it out. --Auntags (talk) 21:19, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

I agree with you on both points. Personally, I think that the passage "While not quite rpf, there is a general fan consensus on how members of the fandom view these actors. Rob McElhenney is smart, cute, and straight-laced. Kaitlin Olsen, his wife, is very beautiful and probably the funniest one. Charlie Day is small, cute, and shy. Glenn Howerton is weird and gross (despite also being one of the most common objects of lust). Danny DeVito is in a league of his own." should be removed, unless it can be comprehensively cited. I'm not actively in the Tumblr fandom, but I'm certainly familiar with it - I can't come up with sources for these, although I imagine that one could.

I think the Tumblr-based fandom is decently sized. It's hard to quantify that, I suppose, unless the fandom is really big. That being said, IASIP popped up on Fandometrics in February and March 2017 - although I think that chatter may have spiked on Tumblr during that period for some specific reasons, and it may not be indicative of general popularity...I'll poke around on that and edit some stuff in later. Anyways, it doesn't seem accurate to assert even that the fandom is almost exclusively on Tumblr, because it seems like the fandom is active on Reddit and Twitter, too? It's tough to say that a fandom is exclusively/almost exclusively on one platform. I think that if you wanted to add more information about the Reddit fandom, that would be good - we can put up a notice that the article needs expanding under other platforms. I added citations for some things, but the content in "Fandom Quirks and Trends" is a little difficult for me to cite in a way that suggests those phenomena are as general as they're presented to be.

A couple things do come to mind, that'd be good to get on the page - I'll flag this to come back when I have a little more research time. I'd be interested in hearing from other editors about the content mentioned above, and how to address these issues. - Fandomgeographies (talk) 23:50, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for articulating that better than I could! I wasn't aware of IASIP appearing on Fandometrics. I'll leave the Reddit stuff out at the moment. I'd prefer to get some more input/discussion on content issues, like you said, before adding even more content.--Auntags (talk) 09:20, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Slanted and Conversational Description

Hey gang - I'm concerned about the tone of the Fandom section, particularly the way in which wank is discussed in a slanted rather than objective, academic way, and the use of conversational dialect such as referencing memes as part of a description. However, my primary experience in the fandom is limited to the Post-2017 Tumblr fandom and would have to do some research to pick out what the specificity of the referenced wank was. If anybody has either the knowledge to do this, or has the capacity to just fine tune some language in the time being that might be needed, though I'll start looking for sources now. --sasiml (talk) 06:38, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Do you mean the way people who find things problematic are described as "people who had seen one episode of the show"? Because I would agree that's an unnecessary description. Fanlore has a Plural Point of View policy which means we don't aim to be objective or academic, and informal language is fine. We try to represent all opinions - which means we may want to edit the 2015 section to be less slanted against fans who found things problematic. I would propose changing the 2015 section to this:

In 2015, wank arose, primarily on Tumblr. Some fans found elements of the show, or activities within fandom, to be problematic. Others believed these criticisms were not coming from "real" Sunny fans. Conflict arose around headcanons, with arguments that certain headcanons related to character's sexuality or possible mental illness were problematic. This wank may have been related to a brewing ship war between CharlieMac and MacDennis shippers. There is a mentality among some (CharlieMac) shippers that "CharlieMac is Pure and Good and MacDennis is Evil and Abusive".

A lot of information has been added to this page since I looked at it last, and that's great. I think it could be structured differently, so the section headings are not years. At the minute, info about the influx of Sherlock fans to this fandom is not clear to readers who are unfamiliar with Sunny, and I think different section headings would help make that clearer. I should have time to look at that over the weekend, but sasiml, is there any other changes you think should be made to the page? Is there any other paragraph/sentence that you think is slanted? --Auntags (talk) 22:55, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Thank you so much for the clarification! I think that's a great paragraph for the 2015 section, and I also agree structuring in a way other than years would be beneficial, especially because discourse as we know can often come back and isn't set to one year. I know the TJLC page has a section on the MacDennis Conspiracy and the migration of Sherlock fandom to IASIP, that might be something to cross-utilize because you're right it's not clear to someone who doesn't know about the connection.

Re: sentences I feel should be tweaked, I think the 2016 section needs some work particularly lines such as "betraying them" just to allow for room for a range of reactions and maybe make it more clear what the feeling actually was to people who may not have had a fandom letdown in that regard haha. The line "The beginnings of fic discourse aka the show can have rape/incest/problematic elements but that can't appear in your fic began to appear in this year." also i think could do with some specifications. --sasiml (talk) 23:51, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

So, I ended up doing more editing to this page than I thought I would. There was a bit too much of a focus on Macdennis's rise, so I pared down the fic stats and references. I think for a general discussion of how ship writing trends have changed over time, it's sufficient. Editors can always add more information to the page, or to the MacDennis page, if they disagree.

I also made the controversies section a list, so editors can add references or expand on a point or add more points. It's not in any particular order at the moment. If one point gets very long, it can be split off into its own section. I agree specific examples are always welcome! I'll try to find an example of the fic discourse you highlighted and add that in as a reference. I know I have come across that argument before in Sunny fandom. --Auntags (talk) 22:01, 14 August 2021 (UTC)