Talk:Stargate Atlantis Season 2/7-10 October 08 Discussion

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Earlier parts of this discussion have been archived: Talk:Stargate Atlantis/Trends/2006/6-7 October 08 Discussion

This page has been locked for editing, any further discussion should occur on Talk:Stargate Atlantis or appropriate talk subpages.

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Please note that a consensus has been reached and some rearranging has occured. Here's a summary of what's happened:

  • Ultimately we're after a page that provides an overview of trends in the SGA fandom for each given year. This overview will probably relate trends in canon to fannish ideas to fanworks produced during the period.
  • Many editors found the existing page (formerly Stargate Atlantis/2006 Fanfic, which was in its first form a migrated, first-person meta essay), too difficult to work with in order to satisfy PPOV in both its language and representation of a wider demographic of fans in the SGA fandom.
  • The Wiki Committee discussed amongst themselves and interested editors (see below) potential options. Ultimately it was decided:
    • A space in the SGA subpages would be created for pages that provide overviews of fandom trends: Stargate Atlantis/Trends/2006, /2007, etc. ("Trends" was settled on instead of "Fanfic" or "Fanfic Trends" to allow representation of a broader range of fanworks.)
    • The 'current' content of Stargate Atlantis/Fanfic has been moved to a Sandbox space - this way, the existing work done on it would not be lost, and it would still be available for editors to grab parts of for the new page at Stargate Atlantis/Trends/2006. Ultimately, the content in the Sandbox page will be deleted. The content in the Sandbox has been protected to discourage editors from changing it; rather they should add to the new page.
    • The discussion (below) will be archived on a subpage of this talk page in the near future.
    • The history of both the discussion page and the page in question itself is preserved in the wiki's History of this page.

If you'd like to begin a new discussion about this page, please do so above the "6-7 October Discussion & Controversy" heading.

To continue discussion of the issue, please add your comments to the end of the discussion below. The discussion will remain on this page so long as it is still active.

Thanks for your patience, and of course your invaluable input on this issue.

--Hope 03:16, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Continuation of Discussion - 7 October 2008 onwards

On starting over with this page

Hi! The Wikimittee have had an emergency chat about this situation, so I'm here to put forth our options from this point on. From the discussion above, it looks like the consensus is that current state of the page is too daunting for editors to tackle to meet with the PPOV. That said, we don't want to scrap what existing work has been done here since the first version of the page was posted (throwing the baby out with the bathwater, as it were).

So. What I'm proposing is that we decide either to make a new location for this page (Stargate Atlantis/2006 Fanfic in Review? Stargate Atlantis Fanfic Review/2006?), or keep it at Stargate Atlantis/2006 Fanfic. Once we've settled on a final location for the page we're after, I'll move the existing material to a subpage of that called "Sandbox". This will preserve the current material on that page, and its edit history, and also make sure it's still accessible for those editors who wish to draw on it when constructing the new version of the page. Once we've finished with the material in that Sandbox, I'll probably delete the content from the page, but leave its history still viewable.

In addition, this talk page will be moved to the location of the new article's talk page. Once the discussion of this issue has come to a close, I'll archive the discussion itself on a subpage of the talk page (as is a typical wiki practice).

(If you're confused by the current location of talk page vs. article page, at the moment the talk page has been moved but article page is still in the same location. In a moment I'll move the talk page back again so we can keep them together until we've decided on what option to take.)

So, opinions/preferences on the above?

--Hope 00:00, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I think that's a good start, as for a title, I think Stargate Atlantis/2006 Fanfic trends is probably a better indicator of the information this page was intended to glean from the original article, but I'm more than happy for people with more brain power than I to mold it to a purpose better serving this wiki.--Amireal 00:05, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
If no one else has opinions on the matter, I'm happy to go with Amireal's suggestion. Will give a little longer to respond before making the change. --Hope 00:42, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
I know this particular page was about 2006, but it seems odd to me to just have one random year of fanfic trends for the fandom. What about using the idea more of a jumping off point, and making it Stargate Atlantis/Fanfic trends/2006? It's an extra layer of subpage, but it lets a higher-level page give more of a general overview, and then break things out by year or season. And huh, season actually probably makes more sense, since it's the canonical season that affects the fanfic tone, not the calendar year, so it would be Stargate Atlantis/Fanfic trends/Season three. (Or, if not a second subpage, I guess "Stargate Atlantis/Season three fanfic trends" -- that works, too.) --Arduinna 00:54, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
I had been assuming people would eventually make pages for other years, similarly titled (ex. Stargate Atlantis/2007 Fanfic trends), but I think having the year as a subpage of fanfic trends might be even more intuitive. I'm not sure about the season, though. For me personally it's easier to think of stuff in actual years. --Kyuuketsukirui 01:04, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Yes! This. I was trying to figure out how to put it. I mean, just 2006 seems silly and you know several other someones will totally be willing to research the other years. I just want to make sure it doesn't get so slash/mcshep/LJ centric again, unless it's subheadered so. --Amireal 01:07, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Should it be restricted to Fanfic Trends? If it's tracking the trends in what people like to talk, think, read and write about per year, might we have it simply as "Trends" (eg. Stargate Atlantis/Trends/2006, /2007, etc) in case people decide to expand the page to include examples in fanart and vids too? So, mapping the overall fandom trends as represented in the types of fanworks produced each year, rather than solely the fanfiction. --Hope 01:31, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Oh, good call, it should definitely be just Trends! That makes everything much more flexible and inclusive. --Arduinna 02:01, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, I think that's a good idea. --Kyuuketsukirui 02:02, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

At this point, it looks inevitable that the there is a perception that the wiki requires a special page that is devoted to everyone saying what their favorite fics are. I understand what is trying to be done here, but this cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be even semi-objective when we make the meta an article. While I appreciate and would *love* a survey of trends, the survey is by defintion limited to each person's personal reading experience and it will be, at best, a very nice looking rec page.

What I thought would be more practical, not to mention much more inclusive and less likely to be a point of conflict between fanwriters, is a page that links to a variety of meta by many different individuals in fandom about fanfic and what they've read/seen, which frankly, we do not lack. I'm aware at this point that no one is going to agree with me that the concept behind this is very questionable. Using the article itself as the tracking device, instead of using quotes and links to various metas to truly and completely capture a variety of viewpoints without sacrificing at least some objectivity, is not going to be inclusive to all fan experience. It will be inclusive only to those who agree with the first draft article and edits.

I could be wrong on how this will turn out--I'd kind of like to be, because trends in fandom are one of my favorite things--but I don't see how this won't end up being a rec page of commonly recced stories and commonly recced authors. And that's pretty much all I have on it; I think I've hit all my points in why this feels wrong to pursue, and hopefully, this won't end up being a clone of every SGA rec page on the net already. I just can't see how, in this form, it can be anything else. --Seperis 03:08, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I definitely understand where you're coming from, and generally agree with what you're saying! I can also see how the previous version of the page (now at the Sandbox location) demonstrates all the stuff that you've outlined as problematic.
But, I'm hoping that the new page will extract itself from that trap of "here are my favourite stories" and attempt to better map trends. I think a big part of it is *not* linking to individual stories I a way that suggests they're exemplary/a demonstration of a particular theme or trend. Perhaps a better way of doing this would be to examine something like delicious tags - eg. sga+au or somesuch, to get a better idea of how numbers rise/fall over time.
But, to address more of your points, part of the big problem is the language that (as said above) presents the links in a way that closes off further expansion on opinions and experiences. I hope that instead of turning this page into a meta piece that represents the views of one (or an agreeable group of) fans, it perhaps alternatively provides links to meta pieces as different arguments for (or against) that reading of what's happening in fandom as 'trends'.
It's impossible to gather every bit of data out there (how many stories were posted, how many times stories were recced and so on) in order to come up with a "true" account of "how things were/are". Hopefully we can carry out the alternative, though - "here's what we think things were like, speaking from experience, and here's some evidence of that experience, but if you disagree them provide your own theories and evidence" - even if we slap a "this is what McShep fans on Livejournal felt was going on in their corner of fandom" heading on it, that's still indicating that we're not claiming to be the be-all and end-all.
And now I'm just rambling, sorry. I hope this page manages to outdo itself. --Hope 03:36, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
I do see what you're saying and the goal--but for the sake of argument, what if the person doesn't want to write about trends in SGA fanfic at all? What if they want to talk about the meta generated by genderswap? The categorization, and the structure, presume that everyone is going to see trends, and that everyone is going to see the same trends, or they can disagree with the trends, but it still states "SGA had trends, and this is what this page is about". And that's all it can be about--I can't create a section titled And Meta on Genderswap and Gender Identity in Fanfiction" here. I can't cover the variations of AUs here.
Consensus was reached, so basically I'm arguing a lame duck--this is how SGA fanfiction will be framed and will be discussed. It will exclude, and trends by nature focus only on perceived significant fiction in the fandom. I'm disappointed and frustrated because as a reviewer and a reccer, there is so much more to SGA than the famous fiction and famous authors. --Seperis 04:10, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Don't stress it and start a new subpage (if you want a subpage.) Personally, I want to see a discussion of fan works on the John Sheppard page that talk about the way he's portrayed and what that brought to the party. Same with the Rodney, Ronon, and Teyla pages. Not to mention the minor characters like Lorne. I've always been fascinated by the way we argue about who these guys are in fiction, and that would be really interesting to me. it's just...it would be a lot of work, and I am basically lazy. But that shouldn't stop you from doing what you want. Start it and see what happens. --rache 04:21, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
It's--complicated. I don't want to contribute to more focus on significant authors/significant fiction focus and the trend page is basically going to be that. I don't see how the page can get around that a fic that sets a trend is going likely be popular, recced, signficiant, by a popular author, and a page devoted to that when pretty much all of SGA fandom does that already--this is a wiki, and it comes with a certain level of authority. I don't know how to work with that when, outside of individual people's meta, it's pretty much exactly what I'd hoped the wiki wouldn't become. --Seperis 04:27, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
I don't think the page has to be what you're envisioning? For example, if I were to make a 2007 page, I would talk about the first SGA Big Bang and McShep Match. For 2008, I would definitely mention paintedspires as the first SGA art fest, etc. It doesn't have to be a list of specific works (though if something was the first example of a major trend, I would footnote it, the way I've listed the first transfic on the transfic page and I think the 5 Things page has a link to the first five things fic). --Kyuuketsukirui 04:45, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm hoping it doesn't, but without the first emphasis on objectivity and inclusion, it will more than likely go that way. Meta's purpose is to be biased, to argue a point. A wiki article should be ideally where you learn there are arguments to be made, not where you make the argument itself. Our first duty here as editors is to set that precedent for others, to invite as many people as possible to tell us what happened by the way we frame our articles and the way we reference, by the way we make clear "At this time, there was this, and tell us what you saw." Roughly speaking. --Seperis 05:05, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
*growls* I was writing this and it lost my session data.
I like the Trends rename. I have no attachment to even one syllable of my original article surviving on this wiki page. But analysis of Fanfic Trends is important and valuable to understand our history. Even the definition of "slash" (to use one example) has changed over the last 20 years. Documenting incremental changes in microcosm -- in one year, in one fandom -- helps us understand those shifts.
In former wikis too much of the documentation of fandom focused on its fights, with little attention to the core of what we do: produce creative works. I think it is harder to document changes in fanfiction: Lit Crit vs. Journalism. But a lion's share of what we do is literary in nature.
I was thinking last night that the article should be completely reframed with a Gen, Slash, and Het section. Without that original methodology section the whole article falls apart like unspooling yarn.
Seperis, I agree. The biggest problem with the article currently is that by scrapping the methodology section and disclaimers (which we have to do in order to make it a wiki page) -- along with the original description that this is largely limited to McShep and Gen -- there's nothing to give it context. The article no longer states clearly, "these are chosen because they have 200+ reviews and were recc'd on however-many rec lists, and thus reflect that they got some attention in fandom." There's no longer any explanation why this or that story, or the drawbacks of this approach. Any story from 2006 could be tossed into the same slots, frankly. We could end up in edit wars over people deleting stories they hate.
In fact, on second thought, I think it will end up in edit wars.
Here's what I suggest: no links to specific authors and stories. The article should be stripped down to trends only, supported by meta from 2006.
(Sidenote: unless we make this an article about trends in 2006 and 2007, we need to remove the 2007 article currently in the reference section. The cascading series of discussions over race in fanfic were a major trend in 2007 but not 2006. Or else we could include all years, though that would get a little long.) -- Icarus 05:34, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Icarus--Argh, I've totally messed up this. The links to the fic are necessary--I mean, there's no way to say the trend started without citing the source. I think what I've been trying to get across, and possibly in the worst possible way, is not that anything was wrong with the meta itself--which is accurate to my reading in 2006 as well, by the way, so I don't argue your points. What I'm trying to mostly say is that when we write these overviews, the very first thing we must do is write it with the most objective view we can. Trends are going to skew to the BNFs, that's the nature of a trend, but the way the article is written, and the various ones around it, I hope, will fight for the most objective voice we can manage if only in how we word it, in how we force the highest level of inclusion and how much we strip our own pov away from the wiki article itself and let the meta do the work of arguing the state of the fandom. Your meta was great and was a reference point for me for further reading, so my objections aren't on your work at all, but on how we structure all our fannish discussions. The first people to write these articles make these decisions, and how we start is pretty much how we will go on. That's what I want from this--for the first writers to set the tone of our discussions for others to follow and add to, make it possible, likely, fun to add to, edit, watch it grow. To make a conscious, reasoned decision that to the very best of our abilities, we can make each article a reflection of fandom in all its contradictory parts. --Seperis 05:51, 7 October 2008 (UTC) -- This was moved from the middle of arduinna's comment. I have no clue how it ended up there.
I didn't take it as a personal criticism at all. I'm used to editing Wikipedia which is so huge I have more time to play with an early version of an article *cough* before anyone else notices. *g* I was startled at the quick and immediate response here. Whoops. Smaller neighborhood.
Frankly, as I see it, this is a forum where we might be able to correct some of my frustrations in the original article -- no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't cover all of fandom. I wanted to include Het. I couldn't, I had to leave it out. I wanted to not skew towards BNFs. But I needed a quantitative method to support my choices, and that automatically shifted me into BNF-land. My calls to everyone to participate and do their own yearly round-ups to fill those holes, well, I didn't convince anyone. It is a lot of work. -- Icarus 06:59, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Don't worry about the current references; all of that text has been removed to the sandbox, and anything that gets pulled back in will probably be pretty thoroughly edited to match the new page. The existing trends/2006 page is now a blank slate. :) Nothing says the race discussions have to be placed on year pages; there can be a Trends/Race issues subpage as well, linked to from wherever it's relevant. --Arduinna 05:51, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Ah, true. The race discussions are very relevant to 2007 fanfic, though having a separate page addressing them as an overall issue would be a good idea.
I'm wondering if it's even possible to discuss literature (and make sense) without discussing specific works. Wouldn't that be like... discussing history without mentioning the names of specific kings? Icarus 05:56, 7 October 2008 (UTC)


Honestly, I don't understand what you're arguing here. The page isn't "fanfic trends" anymore, it's "trends", encompassing fic, vids, art, meta, whatever people want. The word fanfic was deliberately taken out to make sure that things wouldn't default to a narrow fanfic focus, so that people can include *any* trend that they think matters to the fandom. If you want to write up trends in genderswap meta, go ahead! Touch on it on the main trends page; break it out by year; create a genderswap subpage under trends.
I also don't understand your reaction to the idea that significant works and creators will be linked to -- isn't that part of the point of this wiki? To give newbies coming into the fandoms in five, ten, fifty years, "Here are the things that helped shape this fandom, and if you read/watch/view them too, you'll have a better understanding of the works that come later. And btw, here are the works that came later, see how these build on each other?" People are already listing seminal works in Star Trek and Pros; should they stop doing that because people who've been in the fandom already know about them, and have already had those conversations?
I hope not, because speaking as someone who's been involved in 20-30-year-old fandoms as a newbie -- it is beyond price to have a way to find out what the truly influential stories were, and why they were influential, and who and what they influenced. That used to happen because certain zines would get talked about over and over (by different people, with different POVs), and sold used, and you could pick things up. Now? Scattered rec pages, message board archives that get purged for space, posts on defunct or hidden mailing lists, LJ posts that are buried three or ten or fifteen years back in memories and calendars across thousands of different LJs... those are nearly impossible to find, once the fans owning them have stopped being active in the fandom. (Hell, in a lot of cases they're impossible to find *now*, unless you know where to look.)
Who knows what the fandom will look like in 2028 -- but at least fans can come to the wiki and find out what the seminal works were, and how they shaped the fandom they're entering.
And it's not just about individual significant works, but *trends*. Sure, some of the fic/vid/art/meta trends writeups will include links to things that were popular, because that's part of how trends are measured. But you can also absolutely point to a story that only three people ever commented on, as an example of how someone perhaps on the outskirts of the more active parts of the fandom still participated in X trend in Y way, and that would be really cool, and I hope you do it. Or you can compare trends in list-based fiction with trends in LJ-based fiction with trends on fanfiction.net with trends on the scifi.com boards, which would also be seriously cool to see. Or you could compare any of that in terms of slash v. gen v. het; again, very cool. or whatever! Go for it, create the trends discussion you want to see.
In the end (... she said long-windedly), it boils down to, a wiki is what we make of it. Put in the sorts of things you want to see, and see what happens with it. --Arduinna 05:27, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Through this, I've tried to emphasize how the skew toward BNFs is damaging. Linkage isn't a problem, provided it embraces the idea that the article itself--the text of the article--remains as objective as possible from the beginning. I don't know if I've been successful in clarifying that my entire argument, throughout this, has been for those who write the articles and first edit them to set a trend of objectivity in what they write and how they write it. Linkage isn't nearly the biggest problem with multiple pages covering all of SGA fanfiction, we need that and require it for context. But we have to, in my view, also be sure when we write and when we edit, that the article we write is objective enough that PPOV can be achieved and be willing to have others tell us that it's not, to rewrite and to the best of our abilities not be historians ourselves, but create a framework that history can be reflected by the meta and stories we link to. --Seperis 05:57, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
People are already listing seminal works in Star Trek and Pros; should they stop doing that because people who've been in the fandom already know about them, and have already had those conversations?
Oh. Good point. Hmm. Maybe there isn't a way to be fair and even-handed to every writer in fandom without stripping away context completely. The problem is the lack of methodology to explain how we arrived at these stories. It has to be clear how and why we're being unfair to shed a light on what else needs to be considered. Icarus 05:43, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
There seriously isn't a way to be fair to every writer in the fandom. There's no way to *read* every writer in the fandom. But with a wiki, if enough people get involved enough, we'll get a reasonable cross-section. Fanlore isn't about being neutral, it's about being plural and inclusive. With a PPOV policy, deleting links without a good reason will get someone smacked down; instead, they'll have to add their own links with their own reasoning, and things will hopefully start to be balanced. I think the whole thing is going to be fascinating. --Arduinna 06:18, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
I can definitely see the value in saving old information from long-gone fandoms, or fandoms where there is a danger of such information disappearing, but SGA is not a 20-30 year old fandom. There's no shortage of meta and themed recs posts out there. I mean, yes, it's important to start saving information *now* on *current* fandoms, so that it will be here 20-30 years from now, but really... we're not in that situation with SGA, are we? -- Liviapenn 05:46, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Better to do it now while the information is fresh than to head-scratch later. Plus, where do we draw the line before we allow documentation? Two years? Ten years? Twenty? Icarus 05:51, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
OK, but how do you decide which stories or trends are "truly influential" while they're "fresh?" How can you tell the difference between a "classic" and a "flash in the pan", if it was only posted eighteen months ago? -- Liviapenn 05:53, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Who said anything about deciding what's a classic? That's the problem with removing the methodology. Without it there's no longer any explanation of what lens is being used.
Here's the larger question: are we going to discuss literature here? How can we discuss literature of any kind without referencing specific works?
If we're not going to discuss literature, then won't that reduce fanfiction (in particular) to a record of its wanks?
If we are going to discuss literature, then what are our standards? Because obviously discussing literature isn't the same as documenting a wank or what a puddlejumper is. It's far more subjective and needs different standards than your typical wiki page. -- Icarus 06:05, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Who said anything about deciding what's a classic? -- Arduinna did, and you quoted her: "seminal works," remember? "The truly influential stories?" That's what I was asking her-- how is there supposed to be a wiki page about seminal works and truly influential stories, if we're supposed to be getting this information while it's "fresh?" Aren't those two opposite things? Which is, I guess, what Seperis is asking, when she asks for a clarification on standards-- are we listing what's seminal, or what's popular right now? -- Liviapenn 07:13, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Then let's make the standards. --Seperis 06:11, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Good idea. Require a methodology section if we're discussing specific works-? -- Icarus 06:13, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Yes. If the wiki article is about how X Fiction changed fandom, then the wiki article isn't where that argument needs to happen itself--it needs to happen in the meta and recs and fannish discussions we link to and document with. If we all use the same simple set of standards and cite what the article is saying, and allow for citations that differ, it satisfies PPOV. I know perfect objectivity is impossible, especially because of fannish consensus on some things, but we can work to make sure that the article acts as the skeleton and the repositor, and let quotes and links do the real work in showing X story in Y context. --Seperis 06:22, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Oh, please no. Sorry, but I hear "methodology", and immediately assume that I'm not longer someone who can participate, because I'm no academic and wouldn't know methodology if it bit me in the ass. It's incredibly offputting, and far too formal a concept for a fan wiki that's supposed to be inviting everyone and anyone in to have their say. I don't want standards either, honestly. I don't want to be told "you can only refer to a story under these conditions and in this way"-- who gives you, or me, the right to decide what the only way to talk about trends is?
This will all grow organically, it really will. I mean, to be perfectly blunt, look what happened when you posted something that struck people as too personally slanted toward your own view. *g* I think we've beat out the bandom talk page! If people write up the most objective things they can, or state their biases up front, other people will take their cues from that. And if they don't, well, wikis are editable, and talk pages are a good way to sort things out. --Arduinna 06:25, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
"Methodology" is a brick of a word, isn't it? If you have an explanation page, or guideline rather than actual rules, or use plain language "a good article will explain how you arrived at X conclusion"... oh, I dunno. -- Icarus 06:43, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
This may be a kind of unpopular slant to take on it, but I think it's worth considering that there's a reason the BNF stories are the most-known and linked ones. Not that I'd apply the term *seminal* to them if we're talking themes and whatnot, because that gets into literary analysis that, for me, this conversation is not really about - it's more about the community's use of and reception of the stories.
Regardless of *why* those stories are big names, the fact remains that they *have* been linked, bookmarked, talked about a whole lot. And I think that in itself is something worthy of note, BUT, most importantly, worth giving context for. I feel like the solution to this lies in transparency - link to story A by author B, sure, but also explain that "story A appeared on many recs list [cite], gaining popularity amongst This Specific Part Of Fandom and acknowledged by other authors as inspiring their own works in this theme [cite]. The popularity of the story may be attributed to the high profile of the author/the popularity of the pairing/etc, but regardless of reason, its circulation was high". Rather than just "AUs were popular, mainly because of story A by author B." --Hope 08:47, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
This may be a kind of unpopular slant to take on it, but I think it's worth considering that there's a reason the BNF stories are the most-known and linked ones. In fandom, we daily talk about the awesome of certain authors and stories. I do not think this is an unpopular stance. The rest, i agree with. --Seperis 13:33, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
there's a reason the BNF stories are the most-known and linked ones
I can't speak to the popularity of that stance, but I think it's making an assumption with which I'm uncomfortable. Hope, are you meaning to argue that the BNF stories are the most-known because they're all well-written? Or am I inferring something you're not (intentionally or otherwise) implying? BNFs earn their status in many ways; sometimes it's for good writing, sometimes it's for other reasons. My POV on the matter is that they're the most-known and linked because they're written by BNFs, and they may or may not have been among the best stories in a given year and may or may not be well-written.
Or when you say the popularity of the story may be attributed to the high profile of the author are you saying exactly what I'm saying? I question whether high circulation is a standard we want to use, as it may perpetuate the popularity of possibly mediocre stories when we may (or may not) want to concentrate on the seminal works as defined in a different manner (such as acknowledged by other authors as inspiring their own works in this theme). --ainsley 20:22, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
I don't see why it can't be both. I mean, if I were talking about published fiction in whatever year The Da Vinci Code came out, I would certainly want to mention it for its immense popularity. It's utter crap, but that doesn't change the fact that it was popular. I could also talk about fiction that year that won literary awards, etc. --Kyuuketsukirui 20:51, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
ainsley - Hope, are you meaning to argue that the BNF stories are the most-known because they're all well-written? - no, sorry, that's precisely the argument I'm *not* making, hee. What I'm trying to say is that judgements on quality are not something we're trying to make on the wiki. Yes, I'm pretty much saying exactly what you're saying *g*. And I'm concerned that when we talk about finding less-known stories to link to than the "mediocre" BNF ones, that we're in actual fact making a value judgement on quality there (just because a story or author is an underdog doesn't mean problematic aspect of making a quality/value judgement doesn't exist).
Really, what I'm saying is that instead of going into the situation setting ourselves up to be presenting a value judgement of the quality of the works, instead be more transparent and articulate that these stories are being linked because they have a high circulation - and identify possible reasons for that. Otherwise, I think it's an even more treacherous minefield to try and find/link to "the good stories, regardless of their authors/popularity".
Instead of trying to record the "good" stories, why not just refocus and document the high-profile ones - because really, documenting their reception is more about the *community* history, which is what we're after. Otherwise, the risk of it becoming a rec list with delusions of grandeur is unavoidable. --Hope 22:55, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
This. It's really easy to think that the information around will always stay around, but it doesn't. Websites vanish; LJs are locked or deleted (and if LJ ever vanishes, what then? How many hundreds of thousands of posts and comment threads will fandom lose, that were never documented anywhere because someone had them saved in their memories and that was good enough?). Fans move on faster and faster -- I'm in Pros with people who've been there for 25 years, who can still talk about things that happened in first person, but I'm seriously not expecting that to happen with SGA or other newer fandoms. Can you, right now, point me to conversations about, say, blond Weir vs. brunette Weir? It's only been five years, and the fandom is still active, so it should still be part of the fannish consciousness. But I bet it isn't, because five years in LJ fandom is two or three lifetimes. I'm even willing to bet a lot of fans don't even know there ever was a blond Weir. Five years.
But if we start documenting some of it, maybe some of it will stick around. Not all -- some of it will be deleted as no longer useful, I'm sure. But some won't, and that matters, it really does. --Arduinna 06:15, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Yes. I wrote the meta in the first place because even in three years the Harry Potter fandom had so radically changed that it was hard to explain certain fanon trends (leather pants, anyone?) without talking to an "old timer." I want to preserve a snapshot of the SGA fandom before the same thing happens to us. I linked to specific stories because that was my proof, and... you can't really discuss literature without mentioning what you're discussing, eh? -- Icarus 06:43, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
To get down to me, me, me, I disagreed with a lot of the trends that Icarus saw, but I did not write a rebuttal post in 2007 saying why I felt they were wrong. (see: too darn lazy and the amount of work required daunting) That's part of why I don't want to just refer to meta, because I cannot be sure that the 'opposite side' ever got noticed in the first place. But it can be noticed here and now, which is the point of PPV: this is whoville, and everyone can talk about their opinions, no matter how small, and they will be heard. It'll be crazy and contentious with a lot of back-and-forthing on talk pages, but I think we're all good with that. So I want the disucssions to be done here, right now, in the raw, while we can still remember them. And like Arduinna said, if we start documenting it, some of it will stick around. --rache 15:01, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Which is exactly why I put the article in a Wiki. If I thought my point of view was the end-all be-all, why would I ever put it into a Wiki format which automatically opens the subject to many voices?
I agree, we need to start documenting now. We need a focus on the stories, not the wanks, or we'll turn into FanHistory with its many faults.
I'm starting to get the sense from the discussion here that people just skipped past the boring methodology section to go straight to the trends. Which I can understand. Reading a methodology is boring. But people skipped where I asked others in fandom what they thought the trends were. Skipped past where I explained that it was impossible to cover Het as well, though I'd wanted to. Skipped past the quantitative method I used (number of comments, number of rec lists). Skipped past the point where I explained that the trends observed were like a "fish-eye camera" in a room: one viewpoint at one particular point in time. The methodology was there for a reason: to make it clear that I wasn't picking stories at random. -- Icarus 03:42, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
I don't think anybody skipped past those parts, Icarus; those are exactly the parts that made people think that the meta, as it existed at that point in time, was not suitable for being in a *wiki*. -- Liviapenn 03:57, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm used to Wikipedia where I usually have a couple of days to work on an early draft of an article, from stub, to disorganized mass, to a more finished state. Here people jumped on it within minutes of my first posting. If you think that the form in which it was originally posted was how I ever intended it to stay, than you have completely misunderstood me.
Maybe it's naive of me to put it here in hopes that we can expand it and include what I couldn't possibly cover. Maybe it's naive of me to think that the Trend article will include more points of view and not devolve into trying to remove other points of view, including the trends that I noticed. But I think this sort of focus and analysis of fanfic is important and necessary. Very few people would have taken their own pet projects and opened them up to a wiki and you should recognize the sincerity implied by my doing so. -- Icarus 04:52, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
I don't doubt your sincere desire to constructively contribute to this wiki. Nor do I doubt that this kind of focus and analysis is important and necessary. I'm just not sure that a tight, intense focus is compatible with a wiki format, or-- to put it differently-- that a wiki committee can provide the kind of focus necessary to this sort of analysis. I understand that you're just trying to contribute as best you can, so please understand that so are we. -- Liviapenn 05:03, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
Do you think it can't be done?
I pictured tossing this article up on the wiki, taking a couple days to clean it up to a more wiki-like tone, reorganizing a bit -- and throwing in blank sections for Het and Gen and seeing where it went. I hoped we'd end up with something more comprehensive, even if the quality suffered from time to time as it always does in a wiki. I'm feeling rather discouraged now. (It occurs to me that I have days to edit my Wikipedia articles because they're on obscure topics in Tibetan history. Not a lot of takers.) -- Icarus 07:04, 8 October 2008 (UTC)


Changes to the Structure

I did a rough draft the Trends/2006 page. I'm not particularly married to this page structure, but it's a very rough example of what I mean about making it possible for more information and more povs to be easily added. The canon synopsis I think is left as is--the overview of fiction is basically where the summary of the talking points will be listed and can be added to adn then create a subheader to explain/defend the trend below. Again, this is just a very, very rough idea of how I think it could work to cover all fans and make it easy for many fans to add their views. I don't know if this would work as a final format or that it feels too far off what the original intent was for the page. --Seperis 17:23, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Now that you moved the bit with the John/Teyla shippers and the 2005 ep Conversion from the retrospective to overview of fanfic generation, the citation changes context a bit. I wasn't deep in the ship conflicts of het fandom, so originally I just included that post, because it argued against those who saw Conversion as negative for J/T, i.e. mentioning two kinds of Conversion reactions, but in the context of 2006 itself that post compares Conversion to the 2006 S2 ep The Long Goodbye where Sheppard and Weir are taken over, and as such was part of arguments I think between Sheppard/Weir fans and Sheppard/Teyla fans, which might fit into fandom gooing ons in 2006, but I wasn't really in these kerfuffles much and am not sure I can summarize the context. I just wanted to point out that in a 2006 ship-arguments the article makes a different point than for what I included it as reference when it was part of the retrospective look at Conversion. Does that make sense? --Ratcreature 17:44, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Oh yeah. This is one of the parts of fandom I'm superweak in too. It could go under controversies or the ship itself--I think a John/Teyla person with a grounding in the fandom at the time can make the differentiation better than I can at this point. I do think that a compare/contrast/evaluation of John/Weir and John/Teyla for this season is really necessary. If it feels wrong, I'd say go ahead and move it--I know so very little about it that I can't judge what would work best in context there at all. --Seperis 17:50, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
well, before getting into details, the problem for me as a reader right now is that the canon summary gives more or less still the "where the plot was as 2006 began" but then the overview, being about 2006 would more cover meta and fic reactions to much of S3 (like Common Ground with Todd, Jeannie and Rod, The Return with them in exile), which isn't in the summary. To me that is messed up. Is there a point in the fanon trends that makes going by year more reasonable than going "fandom during season 2 and hiatus before 3"?--Ratcreature 18:14, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Oh, you're good. By season and hiatus makes a lot more sense. --rache 18:21, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
I think the season/hiatus category makes more sense, too, especially if the focus of the page remains the interaction between canon and fanworks. --Sinead 18:47, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
I actually think by season would be more difficult, but that's because I don't read/pay attention to really canon-dependent fic that much, and the stuff I was thinking of including (in 2007 and 2008, since I wasn't in fandom in 2006), are fests that made their first appearances, etc. More stuff that is not really tied into canon trends or specific seasons. (Plus it seems like in order to relate everything to season, there'd have to be a constant back and forth to an episode guide to see when episodes aired, whereas with year, you've got the date right there on the post or whatver.) I don't know... --Kyuuketsukirui 18:28, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Actually, yes. I left it as-is, but personally, season by season makes more sense to me than year by year. If that's the consensus, switching to Trends/Season Two is a great idea. If necessary for some, we could make a split between trends before midseason and after midseason if there's enough interest, which would fall pretty cleanly under year as well. In other words--yes. Like this. Very much. --Seperis 19:15, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm much in favor of seasons because both episodes and hiatus periods seem to me have effect on fandom that I remember better once some time passed than calendar dates. And in either case, whether by time or season I think the canon summary should overlap with the fandom overview of the same time period that comes after in the article if we divide it into timeline sections, not give a "the plot so far" recap that describes what happened on the show even earlier. I mean, if there are ongoing influences from episodes where fandom stuff is delayed or something, that can always be crossreferenced.--Ratcreature 19:30, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
So if the entire format is structured around seasons, how do we handle stuff that is significant in fandom, but not at all related to something in canon? --Kyuuketsukirui 20:00, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Well, any break is arbitrary in some way, and it is still sorted by time periods if we break by season not by calendar year. If the even starts during the season 3 time period I'd stick into the overview of that time period, even if the cause was say some unrelated movie that came out then, and caused a bunch of crossovers with it. So whether I say "season 2(+ hiatus)" or "july 2005 to july 2006" or "season 3 (+hiatus)" instead of "july 2006 - sep 2007" doesn't really matter for sorting things into a timeline.--Ratcreature 20:25, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
ETA: I mean, I don't think that breaking things broadly into seasons means everything has to be squeezed along an episode timeline anymore than sorting roughly into years would mean you couldn't mention eps at all but had to go strictly by months. I just find the season breaks more natural dividers than (Western) New Year when talking about tv shows.--Ratcreature 20:29, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Regarding Notable Works and Controversies

I'm not sure how we can cover FF without mentioning Syne's fic or Xanthe's fic or Pru's for that matter (though that would be 2005) since they did affect fandom trends, not to mention fannish expectations. Maybe reword the section title? If I remember correctly, while some of the arguments got heated, I don't remember them getting actively wanky. Notable and Controversy, in this case, would indicate there was a great deal of discussion in various places by fans, not necessarily in the pejorative. Though as an alternate, using the section to link to a page that is about the specific work that links to the meta and discussion might work as well. Opinions? --Seperis 18:29, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm worried about the article shifting towards FanHistory's emphasis on wanks. Notability is according to whatever trend the story is being used as an example of, rather than the story being notable in and of itself. That would be problematic. Works should be embedded as references within each trend section, or else we've offered no evidence for our trends. Our notable works section should build itself in references.
Also, the trends should focus on trends in art and fanfic, not wanks. So Helen writing a work that directly comments on Xanthe's "Coming Home" is fanfic-related, while someone posting that "Coming Home" was the worst fic in history is wank-related. Helen's "Take Clothes Off As Directed" is relevant to the article, while an individual post is not. -- Icarus 18:52, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure Helen's fic would qualify, since it was done against the author's wishes and did cause controversy when it was posted. Syne's fic didn't set off a trend of any kind, it was just a very big fic. The same with Xanthe's and Helen's--they were big, or somewhat larger than the usual, but they didn't start a wave of bdsm in the fandom either. I'm not sure where you are getting trend from on this.
Also point--the three stories mentioned above transcended fannish discourse at the time. None of the three were, in any significant way, canon related or related to current trends in fandom. Being unique in themselves, I'm not sure they should be on a page about trends at all, since none were harbringers of, or the results of, any kind of fannish trend. I get Syne's story is awesome and it should be mentioned in fanfic history, but I don't think its current location works. --Seperis 19:01, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
I disagree. I'm not sure where that section goes, if it should fall under slash or what-have-you, and the title's not right.
But no story transcends fandom. They all exist within fandom.
Some stories are popular because of trends, they're seminal fics that sum up what was going on in fandom. Others start trends. Still others are part of a stream of fics within a trend.
A perfect example is 2007's Written By The Victors. Fans were furious with the show, thought it was jumping the shark, angry about Carson's death, angry about Sam joining the show, angry about Elizabeth, and Kolya's haphazard death in Irresponsible -- the fans felt helpless and were in revolt for months. Then Written By The Victors summed up that mutiny, with perfect timing, right before the first episode of season four, like the crest of a wave.
Synecdochic's fic was the crest of a wave using Rodney (the fandom favorite at the time) as the voice of the frustration in fandom in 2006 at the terrible ethics of the Atlantis expedition; the one who made the ethical decision that no one on Atlantis or Earth was willing to make. -- Icarus 19:27, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Oh! And Transcendental is another example (how ironic the title is atm...). It was a point of controversy, but why? Rodney had been cast as a quasi-bad guy in "48 Hours" in SG-1 (redeemed a bit later), while the SGA fans had fallen in love. How Rodney was characterized was a touchy, touchy issue because it evoked how SGA was starting to define itself as a fandom separate from SG-1. -- Icarus 19:44, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
We're not talking about Transcendental, though, which can be argued to be the grandparent of most Super!Competent!Rodney characterizations. I'm not denying that Syne's work was amazing, but it didn't start a trend in fanfiction. --Seperis 19:46, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
That's untrue. They can be part of fandom and still transcend them. That's why they get to be very big and very popular. For Syne's fic...Can you point out the trend of stories that followed it? I'm willing to buy it as a product of fandom, but it didn't start a trend and it didn't set off a new genre--if anything, that genre was already started in 2005 of post-Atlantis depressing fics. I'm lost on exactly what trend means at this point if it doesn't refer to a movement in fanfiction itself.
Rodney has been fandom favorite all the while, so that's not a trend in itself. --Seperis 19:39, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
No, it's impossible. No story can transcend its historical context. Pamela became important because of social factors. Shakespeare is very much embedded in his time. That's why there's Shakespeare before 1603 and Shakespeare after 1603.
The entire point of the article is to locate stories within their historical context. That what each section does. Even by calling the article "Trends/2006" implies historical context.
This is the problem of not having a methodology in the article. Your implied methodology is that "numbers of stories" equals a trend -- which leaves you with this oddball category of important stories that somehow exist outside time and space. My methodology is "numbers of responses and recs" equals a trend, and then I locate what the trend was in 2006 and set the story within its context. With this method I don't end up with oddball categories in which stories, that are obviously influential and important, somehow don't fit. -- Icarus 19:56, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Are we using the same definition of the word "trend"? I think in this case, it's going to need citation, because "trend", to me, doesn't imply the number of feedback and recs. Quoting here to explain:
"It's unusual to have one story utterly dominate a fandom, but in terms of fan response, sheer number of reviews, and number of recs, the most talked about story of the year was Synecdochic's Freedom's Just Another Word For Nothing Left To Lose."
I think you're going to need to redefine the word trend for the reader so they know that it refers to number of feedbacks and recs and reaction, because honestly, that never occurred to me as the definition of a trend. It probably also needs to be turned into a cited quote--since you said this in your meta, add in quotation marks for that and cite back to your original essay on trends, so that the reader can go there and satisfy themselves as to the definition of trend and how you are using it in context.
Now, what does this have to do with the section you placed it in, instead of a section devoted to stories that generated discussion and controversy? I'm confused on that as well. --Seperis 20:04, 9 October 2008
Let me add that I did consider doing your approach.
But it would have involved a very large spreadsheet with all the stories in fandom, pigeonholing stories by theme (a tough issue, although I could have had columns across the top for various themes in a fic).
It would have allowed the mundanity of repeated themes and imitations to swamp what was new and powerful: Synecdochic's fic would not have been important in that spreadsheet. It would have receded into the background, and, say, "John and Rodney jump each other" would have been the big theme. Of 2005. And 2006. And 2007. LOL. Everything new would have been lost, and minor pairings would have been lost as well. -- Icarus 20:11, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
We're not going to agree on this; I think changing this to a quote and citation to your meta, with an explanation of what you are referring to when you cite it as a trend, would work perfectly to express what it is you want to get across. --Seperis 20:20, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Go back to the method. How are you deciding to organize this mass of stories? Think of it like a chart.
Are you going to look at the spikes in comments and recs, and see where those spikes coincide? That's what I did. Then I explained what I thought was causing those spikes.
Or are you going to organize it by theme appearing across multiple stories, which I'm going to guess (I didn't do the spreadsheet) is fairly uniform and has one common theme every year: SEX. I don't think that's an interesting way to go, although it is valid, if one collects the data to back it up. What I don't support is just a random opinion that isn't backed by evidence. -- Icarus 20:41, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm not arguing this again. Turning this page into My Favorite Fic in SGA isn't what we're going for and I"m honestly lost why you'd want to do that. This reference to Syne's fic needs to become a citation and linked back to your meta. That satisfies PPOV and lets us continue to use the page to follow trends, not popular fic. --Seperis 21:01, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
What? These aren't my favorite fics. That's a mischaracterization and uncalled for. I had to remove my own favorite fics and go with what the data said (okay, I threw in Class 6 at the end of my meta, but not here ;). I didn't include examples of anything I didn't like in the original meta, but relying on the data forced me to go with the numbers.
What data are you planning to use? How are you deciding what to include? PPOV is not being satisfied here. My perspective is being removed, and for no reason that I can see so far. -- Icarus 21:11, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Let me clarify. Quoting you and citing you and attributing your opinion to your meta is *removing your perspective*?. PPOV is satisfied in allowing multiple interpretation of a single event--to wit, fandom reaction to SGA and the story by Syne--by use of quotation of key meta. This is key meta. It goes to citation. --Seperis 21:16, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Point there. But trends is not a single event. It's a mass of events, and how you pick what to highlight depends upon some kind of method. I'm not hearing one from anyone. Wikipedia has the policy of no original research, and weighing the sources. We don't have anything like that here. You say "citation."
Hmm. I think what's going on here is that this page is no longer about Fanfiction trends. It's about every kind of trend in fandom. It looks like the data source is going to be meta, and not works. It's clear that if I'm going to write about fanfiction, unless we have a separate section for fanfic here, I need to start a page about fanfiction trends. It's a huge topic in and of itself and can't be covered in a general trends page or it will get lost. -- Icarus 21:36, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
No, it isn't. What's going on is that you are arguing you can make vast interpretations of fandom trends and decide what those are without having to say it's you opinion and open to interpretation. Asking you to cite--I'm not even asking at this point you take it out, I'm asking you put little quotation marks around it and reference it to your meta--does not change the nature of this page, about fanfiction in a current era. Why is it a problem for you to add quotation marks to attribute this particular paragraph to yourself, since it cannot, by definition, encompass all of civilization? This will allow others to add their interpretation of trends as well, not just yours. --Seperis 22:33, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
What? No. Totally the opposite. I'm saying everyone here needs to point to some evidence -- like the number of reviews for "Freedom's Just Another Name For Nothing Left To Lose" -- to back up their opinion. Use a methodology. Point to data sources. Decide what those data sources are. I've repeated that numerous times throughout this conversation. I don't know how I can be clearer.
Look at the evidence. Why would I post this on a wiki if I didn't want to open it up to multiple points of view? I've edited Wikipedia articles for over a year, working on Tibetan history articles. I know what's involved. -- Icarus 00:12, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm very glad you are so active on Wikipedia. My point stands, however. Your specific conclusions from research require specific references to your meta, where there the determination can be made given all available evidence. I have yet to understand why you object to quotation marks. --Seperis 02:01, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Ah... I just realized the source of confusion: all my evidence was removed when we got rid of the methodology section. I stated up front I was basing my conclusions on numbers of reviews and the contents of recs pages. Yes, I can see why it looks like I don't want to support my position. That's not at all what's going on. -- Icarus 00:32, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Citation, yes. Just put the parts you consider trends in quotes to indicate your personal research and opinions with a ref back to the original meta you wrote on trends. It's an excellent solution. --Seperis 01:55, 10 October 2008 (UTC)


But this isn't "fanfic trends", it's "SGA trends". Movements and happenings in the *fandom*. Beyond being a notable part of the trend of Rodney-centric fic, and the trend of futurefic, Freedom caused a specific wave of things in LJ-based fandom. And the subsection here isn't "trend-starters", it's "current events and fandom" -- what was going on in the fandom at the time that helped to shape how people thought, wrote, created, responded? This story was one of those things.
Hell, I'm not even in LJ-based fandom, and I heard about it, and about the discussions and the podfic and art and vid that were created by people inspired by it. It was definitely a notable thing that happened in the fandom in 2006, and helped shape the fandom that year.
The way I'm looking at these pages, they're ways to show newbies to the fandom what the fandom was doing/thinking/saying/creating at different times, so they can see how things changed, and one key way to do that is to showcase particular fanworks that had a big impact in one way or another. Freedom had a really big impact. I think it totally belongs here, and probably in other places as well. --Arduinna 20:09, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
I considered two ways of doing this. I knew I had to have numbers to back me up, or else people would jump on my choices.
The first was a spreadsheet with all the stories in fandom, pigeonholing stories by theme (a tough issue, although I could have had columns across the top for various themes in a fic). Aside from the daunting work involved, I thought that would reduce fandom to a gray unintelligible mass.
The second was to use fandom itself to locate trends. First: the number of comments, to demonstrate that a lot of people read Fic X. Next: recs and reclists, to see what people were saying about these stories. Last: I opened a post and asked people to tell me what they saw. The equivalent of interviews, though I don't think there were enough of them. WE discussed what had turned up in my hunt, which turned up minor characters, other trends besides fanfiction, other pairings. I'm hoping that posting this page here will expand this.
We can't go to the "numbers of stories in a theme" equals its importance in fandom. It won't work. You can't back it up without quantitative data (like a spreadsheet). -- Icarus 20:27, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
But we are not talking about importance, we are talking about trends. Again, lets go with the citation route on this one. --Seperis 20:30, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Dora is right. "Trends" is not working out. A trend in what? Demographics? Fic? Vids? Wanks?
I think the title of the page should be more focused, but not just fanfic-focused. "Fanworks Trends"? The point of the article is to focus on the works, the stuff that fans create. -- Icarus 20:50, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
But the problem isn't what the trends are in, but the very definition of the word "trend". --Dora 20:55, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi, I just wanted to offer my perspective -- it might well be useless, because it's only...marginally related? and doesn't answer the trend or data question, and doesn't fit too well at this place? but please bear with me. In my mind, there is this difference between 'important' and 'influential'. And yeah, both are often conflated in the word 'trend' (or at least, this is what I'm also getting from this discussion here?)
For example, (the computer RPG) Planescape:Torment is a very important work that has made a lasting impact on many, many fans. It's a cult classic. But it is not 'influential* -- that is, it did not start any trends. There were no follow-ups or similar games in that style. Yet it was, inarguably, an important contribution to the cRPG genre and is still recognized as such. A history of the trends in late 90s/early 2000s cRPGs woulds be puzzlingly *incomplete* without a mention of PS:T, even though it did not contribute to any larger pattern.
If you posit 'influential' as the primary point of reference, because we're talking about trends here, you can (and IMO, should) still include 'important' works (those which generated a lot of response, but did not kick off/influence other fanworks as much), but make it clear that they are of a different quality. 'although work xy generated a lot of response, it did nothing introduce new concepts into SGA fan writing. Rather, it was the culmination of the early 2005 trend XYZ that did not continue in 2006' or whatever. (Because that, there is fascinating in itself -- why were they not influential?)
Since the above only reflects my very probably faulty understanding of what you are talking about here, this may not have any place in the current discussion, and in that case I apologize for the tl;dr m0m --lian 23:50, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
That works. We're talking about a story that has 31 pages of LJ reviews, in a fandom where a popular story will have four-five pages of reviews. Icarus 00:49, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Sure. Just remember to add a citation stating where you made the original determination and how. Again, sweeping generalizations aren't workable in this context unless you are able to give references, and your current wording is definitely not indicative of there being dissent on the subject. I'm a huge fan of citation on this case, so the reader can read your meta at their leisure and draw their own conclusions regarding the data given. --Seperis 02:08, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
This. --Seperis 20:59, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
No, no, that's not true. The trouble here is that I'm talking about academic standards. Wikipedia gets around that problem by not allowing original research, and by not allowing self-published materials. So they compile what's already been through some kind of academic or journalistic process.
We don't have anything of the kind. We have meta, but no archive for meta. And most of it's in personal posts so you can't even search for it, except by scrolling back through meta_fandom.
That was another approach I tried when I wrote the original piece. It was painful and painstaking. I found some meta posts about the crappy ethical decisions on Atlantis by Amireal and whatnot, but it was harder to do than a spreadsheet that included every fic from 2006. At least you can find the stories. -- Icarus 22:19, 9 October 2008 (UTC)


Okay, I'm lost on what defines a trend. No one's denying Syne's impact as a fic that was very big or very discussed, but what trends are you referring to in the fandom? I get everyone's adoration of the fic and everything--I have similar reactions to Te's Past Grief and samdonne's Cowboys, but I'm actively lost when I can't see how this fic works into a trend report and not, say, a section on extremely hyped or very popular fic. --Seperis 20:16, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
I agree with you that Syne's fic doesn't represent a trend. The more I think about it, the more I feel the problem is the "trends" bit in the page title - what people seem to want is a page to talk about what went on in SGA fandom in a given year, not just the trends, but also the singular events and everything else. And that would make more sense to me, too. (Although, as has been said before, dividing it by seasons would make even more sense.) --Dora 20:20, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
I agree with dividing it by seasons. It was a tough decision to go by year, and I went with it largely because I was posting these at the new year after sga_santa. I've wished ever since that I'd divided it by season.
"Trends" is just too vague. It can veer into just reporting the best wanks of 2006. We started with "Fanfic Trends" and that's more specific. I'd like to have it a little more expansive though. "Fanworks Trends"? -- Icarus 20:32, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
You're going rather in the opposite direction of where I was headed - you want a tighter, more specific focus, and I'd prefer to open things up. (At the very least, simply having a page "Stargate Atlantis/2006" would get us out of the terminology debates on what exactly constitutes a trend. ;-) --Dora 20:52, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm also in favor of being less specific, and then maybe later on break it up into more subpages if a section becomes very large. dividing by media just creates more trouble, what with all the multimedia fanworks, and the examples already there how fic inspired vids and trailers and art, and vice versa. I think something like "Stargate Atlantis/Season x" would work well. There could be a brief overview over the season in question, and then what people remember as important during that time in fandom. Also, maybe the ambitious analysis could come as a second step, and first steps in knowledge collation could be less controversial things, like maybe simple dates of when big fansites and communities started, and by whom they were made? Like say the newsletter or the Crossroads listing, stuff like that.--Ratcreature 21:16, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
We already know it's going to be too big. The current slapdash version has 17 sections, and the early sections are about 300 words each. This will open at four times the length of the Stargate Atlantis article. And right now, I don't see sections that have anything about vids, or about fan art. -- Icarus 22:05, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
You added the extra sections. Like, several of them. That does tend to add to the total numbers. --Seperis 22:37, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Yes, and some of them will go away once this is better organized. But there also many that are missing as well. I don't think this article is going to get shorter. -- Icarus 00:16, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
It's not long now, it's filled with random empty headers. When the actual size is proven to be too much, splitting it up would be prudent. --Seperis 01:58, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
I'd like to point out re: "Fans were furious with the show, thought it was jumping the shark, angry about Carson's death, angry about Sam joining the show,[...]" for the fandom climate of late S3 that I've also seen plenty of fans who, while they thought the manner of Carson's death (exploding tumors) kind of stupid, were really glad to see Carson gone, because they felt he got inserted into field work in the episodes where he shouldn't have a place, and even more fans who were like myself mostly indifferent to Carson. Similarly with Sam. There are a large number of fans who never really liked Elizabeth, and some of those were quite hopeful wit the news to get Sam on SGA.
I think in a fandom as large as SGA pretty much any opinion about any show development has a significant support base, which makes it even harder to assign "motifs" for why some story has an especially broad appeal, or got a ton of feedback. Also, while I think your thesis about why Written by the Victors was so popular is interesting, I never thought to explain it that way, even though I'm in the LJ subsection of SGA fandom, read a ton of John/Rodney slash and have actually recced the story myself (despite its footnotes too). It could just as well be just the significant group of people in fandom with a kink for footnotes (seriously, stories with pseudoacademic footnotes seem to have some kind of instant following, which it mystifies me since I'm squicked by footnotes *g*), getting into a synergy effect with people who have an outsider POV kink, combined with the author's popularity. Or a number of other things. So to get into this level of detail with explanations, that just seems very speculative to me. I think if there is existing meta that speculates about why a story was so popular that would make for good links maybe, but I think developing possible theories on this wiki page is kind of ambitious? --Ratcreature 21:04, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
There's plenty of room to argue with interpretations and I welcome it. We have a fundamental problem on this page: what is our data source? All of fandom? Yes, that would be very ambitious. I recall this page was originally 2006 Fanfic, which gives us just one source (albeit a large pile) of data, where we could hash out different interpretations. -- Icarus 21:23, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Exactly. With explaining that This Fan had This View Cite, This Fan Had This View Cite, etc. We don't battle it out in the article of the wiki itself. That just creates a war of revision editing, instead of reaching consensus that we'll express all points of views, not just the ones we agree with or thought of ourselves. --Seperis 21:31, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Is it Fanlore policy to only cite meta and not works? The problem with meta is there is no organized library for meta. It's not like fanfiction where we at least have archives and recs. We can go through tags in meta_fandom, I suppose, but those are very general and still sort by date. -- Icarus 21:48, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Frankly I wasn't aware that I needed a "data source" for adding my perspective to this wiki, not beyond having been in the fandom in question during the relevant period of time and claim in good faith to have experienced something. --Ratcreature 22:22, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
That's a really good question. Is that what we're doing here? -- Icarus 22:27, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Yes. Yourself. That's why it's a citation. X said this. Citation. As in, this view came from this person at this time. --Seperis 22:35, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
I don't have a horse in this particular race, not being in SGA fandom, but I'm interested in the general question of how to cite my own opinions or experience in Fanlore articles. If I want to say "I think X is true, based on my own experiences," and I haven't written meta elsewhere about it to link to, how do I make it clear I'm giving my own perspective? We may need guidelines for this.--Penknife 22:41, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
It was--I think--handled in Speranza's user profile on the citation about her names. Talkback Discussion on citation of personal knowledge. --Seperis 22:44, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Arrgh, that was me, not Artaxastra -- I'm on her computer.--Penknife 22:45, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
I AM TOTALLY CALLING SOCKPUPPET. *G* --Seperis 22:51, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
I think that if you want to assert that something happened, like "A lot of people hated that X character was written off" there should be *something* that you can link to-- maybe not in your journal, but *somewhere*. At least one example of what you're talking about. (I personally haven't been doing this as much as I could have, but I don't think I've asserted anything that I couldn't back up with a few links if I had to.) Then whoever comes in with a different opinion doesn't just delete your uncited statement because it wasn't true in their experience, they can just add, "But other fans were relieved that X character was written off" and cite something to support that statement. -- Liviapenn 22:50, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, I agree with you about asserting that "a lot of fans" felt or did something -- that needs at least one external citation. I'm wondering about either opinions like *why* something is true ("It is likely Beverly Hills Chihuahua was so popular because audiences wanted a distraction from economic woes") or statements that are *really* based on personal experience ("I know Penknife is a sock-puppet because I caught her cat posting LiveJournal entries on her journal.") Do we go with third-person ("Penknife thinks/says ..."), or are external citations necessary? It seems like that question's come up now a couple of times in different forms, here and on Speranza's page in particular.--Penknife 23:07, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Exactly. We need evidence. I think we can cite meta, yes, but finding the meta is a problem. I've tried. I was kind of hoping that FanLore could help that problem. There's no archive and digging through meta_fandom is not easy even with tags. Now the evidence I had was in the original methodology section -- number of reviews, recs pages -- is something that we can cite more specifically in the article, since we've removed all my evidence. *snickers* Unless that would be considered the equivalent to Wikipedia's "original research." -- Icarus 00:27, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
I kind of like the approach of "Jane Q stated" or just adding a footnote saying teh source is the person writing the assertion, though in an ideal world, that would be in quotation marks so when adding dissenting opinions, it didn't look weird to have a paragraph say "The biggest fic in fandom was" with a paragraph after saying "And in fandom, the biggest fic" etc when multiple people add multiple views. How that will work out in practice I guess we are figuring out now. --Seperis 23:11, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
I agree that it is good and preferable to have links and citations to back claims up; I have seen the example pages for the PPOV that certainly isn't short on citations with links, so I get that that is the ideal, to show where things come from you recall. But I also think that having to provide a link for every claim becomes a problem when you for example talk about a fandom you were in a little while back. I thought this was more like an informal, oral history, that sure, if I just make a claim without extra evidence, I need to phrase it accordingly, mark it as personal perspective, or something depending on the situation, and maybe point out that my recollection still lacks outside support (with "citation needed" or whatever to look for confirmation from others), but it would still assumed that I didn't just invent it. And that it wouldn't run into "academic standards" or "methodology" objections. I get that with SGA in specific the difficulty of finding links is not so relevant, because SGA is still very recent and lots of the discussions are in public, and you can browse through old newsletters to find some post again, so e.g. I'm fairly sure I could find a link or two to the "Carson takes up too much room offworld" rants I remember reading if I looked would I want to include that, but I wouldn't know where to start finding things to prove some impression of say Roswell fandom some years back for example.--Ratcreature 23:25, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
I was relying on quantitative evidence -- how many reviews, most-recced stories -- all of which was removed when we lopped off the methodology section. *chuckles* That can be written back in, "at ten quadrillion reviews 'Freedom's Just A Name For Nothing Left To Lose' suggests that blah, blah, blah"... if that's the kind of evidence we're using. But looking for supporting meta for an oral history is tough because there is no archive for meta. -- Icarus 00:40, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure we can develop them here--talk about the various pov on the season, yes, but the wording seems to imply all of fandom, and I didn't care if Carson died and I was meh about Elizabeth. All of fandom is, well, a lot of people. I think citing theories and quoting in the body of the wiki should satisfy the idea that this is one of many theories regarding the popularity of X Fic. --Seperis 21:12, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Yes. This. --Dora 21:12, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Removing meta comments from the page itself. I don't think querying the page content is appropriate for an on-page footnote, right?--Speranza 19:20, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
No, definitely agreed -- that's what the Talk pages are for. --Arduinna 19:33, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
*shrugs* Okay. --Seperis 19:39, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Slash / Ship / Gen structure

I've started a reorganization (it's not even remotely complete, I've no idea where to slot some of our current categories now) of the article by Slash/Ship/Gen. The trends in these areas of fandom are different from each other. The episodes important to these sub-fandoms will be different as well, and they'll have different interpretations. By assigning separate sections of the article we can avoid arguments of the relative importance of "Trinity" vs. "Conversion." -- Icarus 19:00, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Moving the Page

Starting a section for discussing moving the page to something without the word "trend" in it. I figured a separate section would be best, as it's kind of getting confusing above and any further replies are likely to get lost.

Personally I was thinking of trends as in "trendy": What was popular? What was big? What was happening that everyone was talking about? I was envisioning a page about the stories that ate fandom, the meta that ate fandom, fests that ran that year, etc. etc. --Kyuuketsukirui 03:24, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I think it's a good idea to move it. I was thinking of trends as they specifically related to fanfiction, fan art -- creative works we produce. -- Icarus 04:05, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
So the page will be devoted to BNFs and what they did for the year 2006? That will be the sole content? --Seperis 04:37, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
That may be one of the problems with the page name. -- Icarus 04:43, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
You can name it Fanfic2006, but if your focus is only on BNFs and your perception of how they changed fandom, it still SGA/BNFs. I'm not seeing how you can call it anything else. --Seperis 04:49, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
I would think, like the rest of the wiki, the content would be whatever people wanted to add. But from the discussion above, it sounds like the word trend is really limiting. I was imagining a page that detailed what went on in the fandom each year, and it doesn't seem like that's possible in a page called trends. I think the scope should be larger. If someone still wants to do an analytical thing with trends in the sense you were using it, they could. If someone wanted to write about fests that ran that year, they could, etc. And all together it would form an overview of what went on in fandom that year. More info, not less. Limiting it to trends means excluding a lot of stuff. --Kyuuketsukirui 04:56, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
And yes, I used popular stories in my example above. I also said etc. Nowhere did I say limit it to BNFs. --Kyuuketsukirui 04:58, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
you said fandom eating fanfic. That would be fanfic that is written by a BNF. It's a page of fandom-eating fanfic by BNFs. A page devoted to Really Popular Fics for 2006. Is there an interpretation I'm missing? --Seperis 05:23, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
I think in talking about fandom in X year, what fics were popular is one possible topic. I clearly listed other examples as well. I also clarified myself in response to your comment and then again down below, but I will say it again: "Trends" seems too limiting and I think there should be a timeline with a wider scope that can include all sorts of stuff that happened in fandom in each year --Kyuuketsukirui 05:46, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
I understand that. But trendy and popular and fandom-eating are going to be attributable to BNFs and their fics. The page may contain other information, but it's still a page of BNFs and then fests. While I can see it in terms of wanting fandom big events, that's still extremely limited in terms of what will be discussed. --Seperis 05:54, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Okay. I'm really confused about what you see the page being about. I feel like we're at an impass because I'm not understanding you at all and you don't seem to be understanding me. Do you want to keep trends in the page title and limit it to discussion of trends (by the definition of trends in the discussion above)? This was supposed to be a section to discuss the possible renaming of the page and I feel like it's gone totally off track to focus on what you think the content will be. I think a timeline of fandom would be interesting. We're supposedly making the wiki not just for us to look up stuff now, but for future fans. If I were reading a page about an old fandom I hadn't been involved in, I think it would be interesting to see what things happened in a given year (or season, if that's how it ends up being divided). These things could be stuff like because of the episode Trinity, there was a surge in fics where Rodney ate lemon chicken and said screw you all, I'm going to China (with a link to the list of post-Trinity fics that I know someone has). It could be stuff like meta on the treatment of Ronon and Teyla in fic that was sparked by the barrista fic. I could be a list of fests that ran that year. It could be all sorts of stuff I'm not thinking about because this is all off the top of my head. So what would be the benefits in limiting it to things that can be fit into part of a trend? --Kyuuketsukirui 06:23, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm confused why you would want a page specifically honoring what you consider the really big fic and authors, so that does make two of us. --Seperis 13:27, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
I don't. I have repeatedly stated that that's not what I'm talking about. In fact, the very comment you responded to had three examples of things that are not about BNFs. At this point, I can only conclude that you are deliberately misreading what I'm saying. So, whatever. You win. I'm through with this page. --Kyuuketsukirui 13:57, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
I've run into a similar impasse, both here and in the topic below. Brick wall. Not even a pretense of cooperative effort. This has been a complete waste of time. -- Icarus 07:05, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Yes. I insist, as a brick wall, that you cite. --Seperis 13:27, 10 October 2008 (UTC)


First, you're making this about me. "Your focus" and "your perception." It's not accurate, that isn't my perception, but also, let's keep the focus on the content of the article. Not on the people discussing the article. Do you think the title should be changed? -- Icarus 05:10, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
That's exactly it. You cannot present your findings without citing them. You have to be able to say "this is what I found during my studies". Why don't you want to cite? You cannot present your findings, no matter how carefully and methodically organized, as undisputed fact. They are good and useful and they are well done, but they are not indisputable and require citation to show where you got your information. For all I care, you can actually say "Syne's fic was the most popular fic in 2006" with a cite afterward attrributed to you and linked to your meta where you drew that conclusion. --Seperis 05:18, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
I listed below what I meant by raw data. It's not the same thing as the oral history Ratcreature was talking about. -- Icarus 05:22, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Cite it as raw data you discovered. ref Icarus states she drew these conclusions from raw data, link to your meta, /ref --Seperis 05:24, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
As discovered by me? Objective fact: Freedom's Just Another Word For Nothing Left To Lose has 31 pages of comments. That is a large number. That is an observable, measurable fact, having nothing whatsoever to do with me. -- Icarus 05:29, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
*thoughtful* Ref Syne's fic link /ref so people can see the thirty one pages themselves. Kind of a red herring, though. You said this: It's unusual to have one story utterly dominate a fandom, but in terms of fan response, sheer number of reviews, and number of recs, the most talked about story of the year was Synecdochic's Freedom's Just Another Word For Nothing Left To Lose. Which is not what you just said. You stated a conclusion based on the thirty-one pages of the story plus unverifiable number of reviews plus unverifiable number of recs. Cite it as part of your research. ref Icarus's research, link /ref --Seperis 05:34, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Ref Syne's fic link /ref so people can see the thirty one pages themselves. Yes. That's what I'm talking about. Don't assume what's on that page is anything like what I intend it to be, no more than what you've put there (a random mess of headings) is how you intend it to be. I know that isn't, so you should assume the same.
As far as Kind of a red herring, though -- knock it off with the personal accusations. That's antagonistic and not appropriate for a talk page. -- Icarus 05:43, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Red herring--appropriate when you are using as an example something that was not like the paragraph in dispute. What you wrote above is not what the article states and what I was objecting to. I objected to the specific wording of that paragraph being a conclusion you drew from your collected data and therefore should be cited as from you and your raw data. --Seperis 05:48, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
You are being antagonistic, it seems you've already made up your mind, and you are holding fast to your wild assumptions about my intentions. In Wikipedia this is called "forking" -- discussing the same topic in two or more different places. The section below is where we're discussing sources. And we're not discussing me. You can copy and paste this section there if you like. -- Icarus 06:01, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
You're correct; I am convinced citations are needed. That will not change. The conclusions you drew on trends are based on raw data, but that still does require that you cite your sources on your reasons for interpreting the data the way you have. The conclusions may be solid based on your data, but those conclusions still need to be cited as ones you drew from your data analysis. This doesn't make them bad conclusions, or incorrect conclusions, but it does need to be attributed to your work on the subject. --Seperis 06:06, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for moving away from personal antagonism. I appreciate it. Never have I said that I'm not going to cite. You haven't answered my question below: what sorts of sources should we use for this article? -- Icarus 06:55, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
There were no personal attacks; unfortunately, we seem to be at an impasse. Since you have gone back to ask what is acceptable source, I will state again--cite your source. If you wish to talk about a revelation from a mystical dream, cite your source. If you want to use your raw data, cite. If you want to express your personal feelings, cite. If you want to talk about your observed trends in fandom, cite. --Seperis 13:24, 10 October 2008 (UTC)


Trying to rephrase and clarify myself here. Basically, I was seeing these year pages as a timeline. Like with the rest of the wiki, anything could go on the timeline that people think should be there. If we stick with trends, it seems like that would automatically exclude a lot of stuff because it wasn't part of a trend (or was part of a tend in the basic sense of like "there is a trend of creating fests in fandom"). I would like to see some sort of timeline with a wider scope than just what works were part of a trend or started a trend.

All I'm saying is should we make the page about more than just trends, Y/N? --Kyuuketsukirui 05:17, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes. The word trends is creating confusion. -- Icarus 05:20, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Appropriate Sources and Citations

There is some confusion about appropriate sources and citations, and no policies yet to help. We have three different ideas of proper sources. Seperis, Ratcreature, please correct me if I've misunderstood you.

Cite meta only. Seperis feels that we should only cite meta that has been written in fandom. If there's no meta, there's no support, and therefore it shouldn't be in the article. (This is the strictest standard.)

Raw data. Icarus (hi!) says that meta is hard to locate because there is no archive for meta. Meta's in private LJs so we can't do a google search. Plus some writers might not be comfortable having their personal LJs linked to from Fanlore. So we should be able to use raw data (such as numbers of comments, numbers of recs) to 1) identify trends, then 2) hash out in the article and talk page the group's interpretation of that raw data. One of us proposes an interpretation, another changes it, and we come to happy medium that is PPOV. (This is the second-most strict standard.)

Record oral history. Ratcreature was under the impression that we were recording an oral history where sources may have disappeared in this ephemeral internet, but so long as we state "according to Ratcreature who was involved in X" we can cite without meta sources. Comments from Hope on Cesperanza's Talk page has indicated that this sort of information without sources can be added to Fanlore as a placeholder. (This is the least strict standard.)

Should all three of these types of information be use? Should we just use the first two? Should the page be restricted to citing existing meta only?

-- Icarus 04:39, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Your meta is a citable source. You cite and link to it, yay. What you discover in your studies is a citable source. You cite and link to it. Your opinion on what you saw/read/heard is a citable source. You cite and note it is your observation. And I agreed with Ratcreature--you cite yourself as the source, it is still a cite. Your personal research is good and thorough and enjoyable, but that does not make it undisputed fact or the law of gravity. --Seperis 04:47, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
You really don't understand. I'm not trying to struggle to get my meta in there. Nor am I trying to make it indisputable fact. I've never said that it is, not even in the meta. I'm trying to get more points of view. If we had fifty people who wrote meta on this topic (who were comfortable being linked by Fanlore) then, cool! We could cite all of them. What I'm trying to do is take the raw data -- Synecdochic's fic has 31 pages of reviews -- and all of us interpret what that means (impactful? overhyped? tied to fan issues at the time?), without ignoring that something is going on there. -- Icarus 04:55, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
But that's off-topic. Did I get your perspective right, that only existing meta should be used as source? -- Icarus 04:59, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
I think Seperis made herself very clear-- but no, you don't have her perspective right. Your meta is a citable source. This is what you're understanding her to say. Very good. But IN ADDITION, as she just clearly stated-- what you discover in your studies is a citable source, and your personal opinion is a citable source. As long as it is properly cited. -- Liviapenn 05:05, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Huh. Can you point me to where I said that and refused the idea that you can cite yourself a la Ratcreature? We could do it this way. You post what you think is objective, and I'll mark every time I require a citation so neither of us get confused, so we know that when you say "This is the story that ate fandom" I can mark it with ref Icarus, metalink, date, accessdate /ref so the reader knows that your careful and thorough research is what led you to this conclusion. --Seperis 05:10, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Looking at the three options: I'm asking to clarify three different approaches. Approach one is cite meta only. You're clearly for that. The next is use raw data with multiple views interpreting that data (including yourself, anyone who edits the page). That's what I've been talking about. Do you feel that should be used? The third is record oral history which is just a personal opinion and doesn't cite any data at all. Now you've mentioned the first and the third (you may have mentioned it above and I missed it in the flood of discussion), but you haven't said anything about the second. -- Icarus 05:18, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Actually, I did, but you are very focused on a backdoor to avoid having to cite yourself. You have to cite it the raw data as well. An easy way to do this is ref Icarus received these results from raw data, link to your original meta /ref --Seperis 05:21, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Okay, these personal accusations have got to stop. "You are very focused on a backdoor to avoid having to cite yourself." WTF? Not true, and also very rude of you. -- Icarus 05:24, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm being truthful. You are not citing yourself. You have yet to cite yourself. You haven't responded to any of my questions on why you won't cite yourself. I dropped my objections to the paragraph about Syne if you would cite yourself and your meta as the source. So it's a statement of perceived fact, reference me. You cannot use your research, your conclusions, or your perceptions on trends, on teh best fic, on what happened in 2006 that caused them to be popular without citing yourself as the source. --Seperis 05:27, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Accusations are not truth. They are assumptions of intent, they are rude, and they are inappropriate. You very obviously do NOT know my intentions.
Everything in that article is so far from finished... it's slapped together with random headings all of us have added. I assume good faith from you. I assume that you do not intend to leave the article in its current form, and that you, like me, are trying to work out the content of the article in the talk page.
Now back to the topic. Raw data is not the same thing as oral history. Raw data is objective, quantifiable facts. What do you feel about including raw data with multiple interpretations of what that data means? -- Icarus 05:38, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
ref Icarus data link /ref Even raw data requires a citation on conclusions, especially when no one else can see the raw data for themselves. Now, I have answered your questions several times. Why are you not citing and why do you not want to cite? --Seperis 05:43, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Yet again you turn this into something about me, and not about the article. The answer is should be obvious.
Why haven't we all jumped right in and filled in those blank spaces in the article?
Because we need to work out what we're going to write on the talk page first. Christ. I don't want to start writing stuff willy-nilly because so far my efforts have been badly misconstrued. Everything I've put in there so far has just been lifted from the meta as a starting point. -- Icarus 05:52, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
I have no objection to you throwing things up you discovered during your meta, as long as those parts you attribute to your research. Even if this is just in progress, it doesn't take long to add a reference. And at this point, it's about your paragraph that you wrote in the article. I just want the parts that you are adding that were based on conclusions you drew in your meta to be marked as such. --Seperis 05:56, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
What's the point of polishing the section up and adding cites when we haven't even decided that we're going to keep it? We have no structure, no consensus, and even the appropriate sources are under debate.
Now stop making this about me. It's antagonistic and it's not how people treat each other on a Talk page. -- Icarus 06:05, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure the sources were ever debated--the citation of those sources is. We should cite when we add conclusions we've drawn based on whatever research we've done on the subject. The article itself does need those citations so we can sort out individual perspective and points of view and where the data came from and who collected it. No one doubts the integrity of your research or your thoroughness; what is being debated is citing it as your meticulous work to study the patterns and the conclusions you drew from that. It's excellent source, and citing it shows how and where you drew those conclusions as well as methodology involved. --Seperis 06:09, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
The point of adding cites is that this is a wiki, not a livejournal entry. Facts should be cited. Opinions should be cited. This is not "about you," except insofar as you seem to be arguing that you shouldn't have to cite things. -- Liviapenn 06:28, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
I've never refused to add cites. I don't even know if going to keep that section. I just had all my hard work, a whole page, erased a day ago. I'm not going through that kind of work again until we decide what we're going to do with this article.
Now let's pose the question to you: of the three above, what types of sources/cites should we use? -- Icarus 06:52, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
I gave my opinion on this several comments ago: "what you discover in your studies is a citable source, and your personal opinion is a citable source. As long as it is properly cited." -- Liviapenn 07:18, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
What do you mean by "in your studies"? -- Icarus 07:28, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

[outdent] I think we're at a complete impasse. This discussion has drifted through accusations, brick hard presuppositions, personal attacks, false accusations, and no where is anyone answering the questions posed at the top of this section. PPOV implies cooperation and I'm seeing none. This has been a complete waste of time. -- Icarus 07:28, 10 October 2008 (UTC)


(outdented by ana for readability) I don't understand this entire conversation; I just went in and cited the story page direct; why cite Icarus's meta? Just link to the page--31 pages of comments. Next? --Speranza 14:43, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
I think the idea here behind the controversy is that putting the mere fact out there (31 page of comments) implies a scale (that is a lot of comments, hence: the story was popular) when some want to know: can anyone really tell if it is a lot or not? should we decide? etc. At this point I refuse to offer a personal opinion on that, but that's what I see as being a problem. --anatsuno 14:55, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
OK, the thing is, by that standard, you'd have to a fandom wide statistical scale before you could say anything. I mean, 1000 comments IS a lot of comments, and AFAIK no SGA story that year got more (though I'd love to be corrected. I don't think that there's any way it doesn't prove the claim, "The story was popular." Now it may well be that in a tiny fandom 10 comments is a ton--I mean, think of Yuletide! But a person writing about that could say that; Mary Jane Fan's story X, which was written in the fandom Y, got a big response for a small fandom" or "got ten comments, which was a lot in that fandom." Thing is, my concern with this whole page is that it seems to be a) talking about how to talk, which is the number one thing that stops people from TALKING; it's why some lists have "no meta" rules and b) that it's stopping people actually working on the WIKI, which is going to be sloppy and partial and wrong by definition and until others come in to add their views. You can't stop everyone's wrong first draft until everyone weighs in, particularly on a page like this, which will require the views of people not currently in the discussion! And the way this is going, who would touch this with a ten foot pole? It's a shame! --Speranza 15:06, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
And here in a nutshell you have the reason why I'm on the verge of throwing the towel. :) - yet, even with the discouraging effect of the meta, in a project of this scope and ambition which is this young, it seems obvious to me that yes we need these things hashed out. I mean, the wikimittee could proclaim from on high, of course. but we like to think of it all as a learning process that will be ultimately be good for Fanlore. aren't we supposed to think long term? the "no meta" rule can certainly come into effect later. I would think it very premature now.--anatsuno 15:55, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
So the history of SGA fanfiction really needed to know about Syne's thirty-one pages of comments. In text. INstead of simply having Icarus cite her meta for her conclusions from her analytical data? I respect your opinion, as a general rule, but asking for citation isn't on par with censorship. There are no actual limits, AFAIK, on source, just that you must cite. --Seperis 15:12, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm sorry, I honestly do not understand your point here at all. The history of SGA fanfiction really needed to know about Syne's story, because it was important to a really large number of SGA fans, as the 1000 comments indicate (and of course, not "all" SGA fans.) I didn't *need* to cite the 1000 comments, but because you asked me to prove that the story was important to many fans, I cited the 1000 comments and some works the story inspired. I don't understand an SGA history that ignores hugely important works; any big story is a flash in the pan, and I'm already depressed at how hard it's going to be to discuss the hugely important stories of 1998, let alone of 1992. But how can we do that if we can't discuss the hugely important stories of 2006? I should add, too, that to me, the history of fandom is very much a history of what people *made* in fandom: stories, art, vids. I know that for other people, it's other things, but there's no space constraint here. Anyone who shows up can add their point of view. --Speranza 15:23, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
That's not the argument I made. I asked for citations for what Icarus specifically saw as trends, and in that specific paragraph she originally wrote, simply to add a ref tag to sign her name. You're correct, it's not all SGA fans. It was LJ community fans. It's very, very easy to write history when the only thing you have to do is point toward Big Feedback Here, Therefore Important. In which case, history is literally only about people with lots and lots of feedback. I don't necessarily dismiss this view as a study of history, though I find it biased in the extreme at best and elitist at worst, but only if there's truth in advertising--this page is written by x, y, z about People Who Mattered only, and you matter if your feedback is greater than x. Or to put it another way--if the line "Syne's story was the biggest thing to hit SGA fandom ever" is made and accepted as irrevocable fact and without citation, it is stating that other points of view are wrong. For many fans, it was a story that was hugely influential. For some of us, it was just a story we liked and did not find the same meaning in. I want the citation so that people who didn't read it, or didn't care for it, or belonged to an obscure Rodney/Carson branch can explain how X fic was the biggest thing to hit *their* part of the fandom ever. Without that, the entirety of fannish history is through a lens of who was most popular and who was most well-liked and who had the best friends and most people to rec them, and I cannot, do not consider that in the spirit of tracking fannish history. --Seperis 15:36, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

"raw data"?

sorry, I can't figure out the manual indentation with the long thread above, but I don't understand what this "raw data" that supposedly could be agreed on is in the first place. There is no such thing, because any counting of anything in a fandom, especially one as large as SGA, is a selection, especially when that counting is used to make a point. I mean if fan X counts the number of John/Teyla related stuff in fandom and the number of John/Rodney related stuff in fandom they know of, to then to conclude J/T is less popular than J/R in a meta post in their LJ, the conclusion is something that I suspect most SGA fans will agree on, so if someone were to put in a sentence in this wiki "Going by numbers of communities and fanworks J/R is a more popular pairing than J/T(link to their meta where they actually counted something or other)", that isn't going to be controversial as content, because most people will have a similar impression and there is enough distance between the pairings in size that any method of counting will likely yield similar things. Just like a sentence "many fans see J/R as the dominant pairing in the fandom (links to cite scores meta posts about how popular J/R was that didn't actually count any thing)" isn't going to be controversial, even though it doesn't have any random statistic samplers. However any particular method of counting fanworks and fandom communities (what to include what to exclude, how to define "J/T" how to define "J/R", where to look...) is going ot be wildly contested in the details. Which is why the same method of counting as above would be absolutely useless if the question was "is Rodney/Teyla or Rodney/Zelenka the more popular pairing?" So I think the idea that "data" was somehow less contentious than collecting impressions is just not true.--Ratcreature 07:15, 10 October 2008 (UTC) ETA: For example what do 30 pages of LJ comments say? I mean, I can look at a random SGA story on ff.net that was published in 2006 say "Warrior, by Queen of the Red Skittle" that has 406 reviews. I had never heard of this, was it influential? I have no idea. I mean, I can take random samples and find "Snacks, by moms2398. Series of episode tags that involve Atlantis' Food Services Chief." that currently has 268 reviews. I had never heard of this story either. Or "Cast between Worlds, by phoenix catcher" a HP xover that has 469 reviews. Numbers don't really help with concluding anything.--Ratcreature 07:30, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, I think that's the thing to keep in mind. Fandom is never just one group. Unfortunately most of the people editing the wiki are from this one group of LJ fans. So we can really only talk about our own experiences of fandom. But we can talk about how within SGA fandom on LJ, a story with 21 pages of comments is pretty huge. And hopefully eventually someone with experience in other areas of fandom will come in and add their experience. --Kyuuketsukirui 07:52, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Yes, indeed. Since the creation of ff.net C2 communities (that are now just called "communities") in... 2004? 2005...? ff.net has been its own fandom environment. They have their own hits, recs, etc. Many LJ users don't post on ff.net for various reasons, and ff.net people are often unaware there is an LJ-based fandom. -- Icarus 08:13, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
fwiw ff.net on the gen side of SGA fandom has a fair amount overlap with gen LJ fandom I think, so I'm not sure how to separate these even into distinct communities. (Though I haven't counted author names and who xposts to LJ and who doesn't, so sadly no statistic to back that claim up either, just anecdotal).--Ratcreature 08:19, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Then hopefully some gen fans will add data about their section of fandom, whether that's on LJ or FFN. I'm just saying that no one can be expected to be knowledgeable about every area of fandom, so we should just write about what we know, and try and get the word out so that people who do know about other areas can bring their knowledge to the table as well. Even just in general, there's a pretty narrow focus in the wiki right now, on LJ fandom, especially slash, and some historical stuff that led up to that, but not much outside of that scope. I plan to ask my friend who's active in soap opera fandoms to spread the word and hopefully get some folks there interested, and I plan on adding older anime/yaoi stuff myself. --Kyuuketsukirui 12:52, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm pretty much out of steam. But this, maybe, is getting somewhere.
An example of what I've called "raw data": Objective fact -- Freedom's Just Another Word For Nothing Left To Lose has 31 pages of comments. It's cited.
Then person A interprets that data point to mean one thing. I dunno, "Story is popular." Person B adds their interpretation to say it means something else, "Story is popular because of fandom culture something-or-other." Person C disagrees, and adds another point of view, "However, story is popular due to hype and the fandom snowball effect." Voila. A happy medium representing multiple points of view is found and we don't ignore the data. But it's the data that's cited.
The reason why this is a question at all is that on Wikipedia, this kind of "raw data" is called "original research" and is not allowed. Your personal experiences in fandom or anywhere else is also not allowed.
Thank you very much. Sleep well. -- Icarus 07:41, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
That doesn't leave room for D The story wasn't popular at all. For someone not on lj, syne's fic would have little to no meaning to them and being told how popular it was would not be an accurate summation of fannish experience. However, you can say "X states that Y's story was popular due to this data" and voila! We have a compromise without having to define popular by community, pairing, time period, and the limits of personal research. --Seperis 13:34, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Here's how I understand what's going on: you all want to know how the wiki intends to work, and you're looking a consensus about methodology. With Icarus, it seems like the underlying idea is that if/once there's a wiki-wide methodology defined (define all types of content, decide which needs to be cited, which are allowed, etc), then we can all go about and fill its pages with original research that somehow would be validated (or validated enough for now) by the methodology. With Liviapenn and Seperis, we seem to have the expression of an opinion that would be: Let's make One Methodology Choice of citing everything, so that even people with another methodology or approach for "factual research" can come in, can submit to that and add their piece. This is because, the way I read it, Seperis and Livia think that what is "fact" is already open to dispute - because it's hard in fandom to be positive that a fact is accurate, and, specifically, that it is relevant. We can see that Icarus actually agrees with this somewhat in the thread where she explains that if she'd used these or that numbers/method, then the only intelligible result would have been "fandom wrote about sex". So "Freedom has 31 pages of comments" should not be there alone, but should instead be "Freedom has 31 pages of comments, as seen [here]" or "as mentioned [there]". Is this an accurate description of the positions? Because I have to say, that's all I can make out from the increasingly tense discussion happening here. I think we all have vocabulary issues and bias issues (as in, the preconceived notion of what we would like Fanlore to be or how we think it makes sense for Fanlore to operate - I know I have some, so this is not an accusation of horribleness to you guys).

The reason why I personally lean towards the "cite everything" model (except when something is a placeholder - placeholders should still be allowed, methinks, with the understanding that they're to be temporary / are disputable, etc) is that yes, it is the only model I see which possesses, built-in, this assumption that there is no way for any individual to write outside of their own subjectivity, even though we all try - and so, citing is a way to systematically acknowledge that; support and show source, allowing others to line up other sources supporting other views, even other "original research" with other methodologies.

Wikipedia does not allow original research because Wikipedia wants NPOV, and they consider that NPOV is achieved with the validation of time and peer reviewing. We want PPOV and nearly everything we document is de facto opinion, artwork, meta or original research, but we're not there to present it as modern-day scientific results: hence, citing everything. Also see what Fanlore is NOT. I believe this is the idea behind the PPOV, and the way to achieve it. Does that make sense to anyone? Is that ... interesting at all, or am I just contributing more confusion to the whole debate? I have the impression there is a lot of misundertsanding going on, so I thought I'd try.

Sidenote: we will probably soon archive a piece of the discussion that is on the page now, again, as it is becoming unwieldy to load! --anatsuno 11:50, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Is that the argument being made? I've been trying to figure out why citation is a such a problem from the onset and why the point of source keeps bringing up. Thank you. Yes, I tend to err on the side of cite everything to preserve various point of views, even if someone has their own methodology and does research. It's perfectly acceptable for them to cite themeselves. --Seperis 13:32, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
It seems to me that many times, you have supposed that when people were asking "which are the sources appropriate?", that also meant they implied "..that would be so appropriate we would not have to cite them to support what we write". Which was not in fact always the question. So, while it looks like some people missed the point you were making (which I read as: there is no such thing as undisputed fact, because even undisputed facts are only ever brought in to support SOME argument, hence, let's always cite), you also missed the point that they were making, ie, asking you a question about sources allowed or not regardless of the citation issue.
The result is a mess of annoyed people, sadly. Obviously we'd need to clearly state: EVERY SOURCE IS APPROPRIATE and ALWAYS CITE YOUR SOURCE, even when you are tempted to think of it as "an undisputable fact". There, I hope that works. --anatsuno 13:56, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Anat, I never brought up source other than to cite it. I can't make a sweeping judgment call on source without knowing specifically what source is being spoken of--see above the surprise regarding methodology replacing citation. If confusion occurred, it was in asking a question that had absolutely no relevance to my actual point, which is to cite the source, and more specifically, in regard to the paragraph on page one that was posted by Icarus that I asked her to cite. So honestly, in the middle of a conversation regarding apples, apples, apples, I'm going to pretty much ignore any call for oranges until the apples have been successfully answered. Of course, since you read through all the threads, YMMV. --Seperis 14:10, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
I think the best PPOV approach is to cite everything, which doesn't necessarily mean "link to an external source," but does mean to clearly state which opinions are whose when claims are disputed (or very likely to be disputed).
So:
"Many fans see John/Rodney as the dominant pairing (cited with external link to an example of someone saying this). In Ratcreature's experience, John/Rodney has always been the dominant pairing in SGA (this is a citation to personal experience). Icarus's comparison of stories by pairing in popular LiveJournal communities in season 1 and season 2 showed an increase in the number of J/R stories (this is a citation of data from Icarus's original research; if it's described elsewhere in more detail, cite by linking to it.) Icarus thinks this is because of several episodes involving the two of them in season 2 (this is a citation of Icarus's conclusion from the data; if it's expressed elsewhere, cite by linking to it.)"
It seems to me that some of the frustration in this thread is also over the question of when to cite -- when first adding information to an article, or at a later point when it's more polished. I think a lot of what people are writing at this point are placeholders -- they're just trying to get something up for other people to work on -- but at the point where people are disputing a statement on the Talk page, I think it's fair to say "let's cite it (at least by identifying whose opinion it is) or remove it."--Penknife 13:40, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Indeed, my friend, you seem wise.--anatsuno 13:56, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Fic Categorization

I'm confused on how stories are being categorized currently. Xanthe's fic is under Alternate Sexuality, which makes sense, but I'm unclear what Syne's fic had to do with canon and current events. Did she mention somewhere in her author notes she was reacting to a specific episode or something along those lines? --Seperis 19:48, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I went ahead and added a section, to split off the fanfic to it's own section. --rache 00:49, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
I think your ref went a little wonky. But I think I like where you put things. Current events just seemed strange. To me that's more of "This is what was happening while fandom was doing this" like a season summary or something. But that's there too isn't it?--Amireal 00:52, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
Good point. I took it out. I also tried to fix up my typing. --rache 00:59, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
I watched, good editing! *G* And thanks, it seemed like a strange header. My next question is, despite having a fanfic subheading, does toft's stuff go into the gender topic as well, I mean obviously it's a bigger thing than 1 story but if I recall it did eventually break through slash barriers and all that jazz, also it has the unique form of being slash AND het at the same time. Depending on who you ask. --Amireal 01:02, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
This wasn't my argument, but the original essay attached "Freedom" and stories like it to the "Ethical Quandaries" thing and posited the whole mess as "Responding To Current Events" by arguing that stories like Freedom, in which Rodney grew disillusioned with the military and the SGC, mirrored larger trends were people globally were getting fed up with the Iraq war and American militarism more broadly. This isn't my argument, but I do think its more interesting than "Big Stories,"--though again, SO not a hill I'm willing to die on. --Speranza 01:31, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
I think that absolutely the ethical question issues could be beefed up with this. I didn't see the link between the series of stories referenced and that argument though, which is why I separated it out. --rache 01:57, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
OK, I'll go in and take a stab at it; it's not my argument but I think I understand it, and if not, someone'll correct me. :) --Speranza 01:58, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
I think examples work best. Getting something in place that can be edited later helps everyone see what the thought process is behind it. --rache 02:01, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
Yes, that's much better for me. I still want to separate out the two current theories behind why the response might have been so large to freedom, but I can do that myself. --rache 02:41, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
Ami, what order are the categories being placed in? I'm not sure what kind of structure this is using and following the edits was not as enlightening as it could have been. --Seperis 01:53, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
Can I get a quick definition of big stories? Samdonne's was very well received--not by thousand feedback standards, but was very popular in not-that-high-a-number standards. I'm not sure now what constitutes big stories if hers doesn't qualify. Ltlj's fic I'm moving to John Sheppard fic--while it is gen, it's also het and slash, and I think it more than qualifies as one of the best of the John Sheppard fics. --Seperis 01:47, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
There are a lot of different ways to do this; a lot of this is stuff we might just want to put into the fanwork, and then link it in to the main page, leaving a summary with pertinant info on the main pages. So, to explain the header, big stories are those that had a large reaction in fandom (however you choose to define it. There are no absolutes in PPOV.) We can change the header if what I have doesn't work. I do think both Cowboy days are over and Retrograde series should be linked on the John Sheppard page; they also should be linked here as big stories.
Oh, I didn't move it because I thought it wasn't BIG enough; actually, I don't really like the "big stories" category because it's not that specific (and that's not the most interesting thing about Freedom!) But its more like, we've got nothing for Shep and gen, and these are EXEMPLARY Shep and gen stories. But if you like them all as big, or all as Shep, feel free; I'm just trying to get some of these categories *started*. What think you as to Ardhanarishvara for Gender/Sexuality? (That's teamfic beyond just Mcshep, you think?) --Speranza 01:52, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
I have no opinion on Ardhanarishvara, as I wasn't as diligent keeping up with it as I might have been, but if it was up to Auburn's usual impeccable standards, I cannot see a reason for it to be excluded. I don't think Crimes Against Humanity however, is appropriate--it never had over three or four pages of comments, so I can't see how it would qualify as popular, influential, or a part of a trend. Several other very skilled writers released more generally popular AUs that year that I'm sure would fit far better. If anything, it was an act of ego to see if I could do something, not if I was capable of it. For the other--if best judgment requires starting with Syne's fic at the top, then I withdraw my objection. The page seems to be filling up. --Seperis 02:00, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
I think we'll end up breaking this page apart, so don't stress it. We might need a full separate page for the ethical discussion, and we may not want to limit it to just season 2 either. We have a lot of meta and intense reactions for it, and it crosses several different seasons. --rache 02:04, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
Stress what? Sorry, I must have missed something. --Seperis 02:07, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, my mistake. When I skimmed your comment, it looked like you were concerned about the length of the page. --rache 02:39, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
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