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Post by nonnie on Oct 5, 2012 4:36:01 GMT
What are your suggestions on how to fix the categories?
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Post by an anon on Oct 5, 2012 4:45:18 GMT
Depends on what you think the problem is.
The manwha and manhua problem could either be fixed by doing one of these things.
1) Renaming the anime/manga category to include manwha/manhua
2) Moving all manwha/manhua out of anime/manga and into comics
3) Creating new categories (or sub-categories) for them.
I think manwha and manhua fans should specifically be consulted on what they prefer. I have read and enjoyed manwha and manhua, but I don't know if I would be a really representative fan. We need to hear more from the writers and readers in these fandoms.
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Post by Guest on Oct 5, 2012 5:17:58 GMT
Someone else mentioned renaming the category to "Asian cartoons and comics," which would include manga, manhua, manhwa, and anime without having to list them all out so awkwardly.
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Post by anon on Oct 5, 2012 5:18:49 GMT
Personally I'm happy with any solution that keeps anime and manga in the same category. As a fan of these genres, there's any number of reasons that breaking them into two is a really bad idea that's going to confuse a lot of people.
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Post by Barbara Gordon on Oct 5, 2012 5:45:58 GMT
I agree that anime and manga should be in one category. I tag wrangle in the comics section and I would *love* comics movies to be with the comics. As is, it creates big tangled cross-category messes.
Still "category of origin" might get confusing if a later form is vastly more popular than the original. A J-drama of a manga, for example.
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Post by Wrangler Dash on Oct 5, 2012 6:38:58 GMT
I wish we could get some kind of well-organized user survey. Right now we're all going on hunches and anecdata and personal feeling.
At this point, there are two results I'd go for, based on whether manhua and manhwa fans would prefer to have their fandoms in the same category as anime/manga but specified, or pulled out of the category altogether:
(1) "Anime & Manga & Manhua & Manhwa" (or "Asian Cartoons & Comics" or "Eastern Cartoons & Comics"). Simple, clean, doesn't require heavy lifting or dealing with other issues.
(2) "Anime & Manga" as one category. "Manhua & Manhwa" as another category. And more granularity in the category system as a whole. Say, "Comic Strips" pulled out from "Comic Books & Graphic Novels," "Mythology & Folklore" (& Religion?) pulled out from "Books & Literature," things like that. This would take a whole lot of input and suggestions, but would be worthwhile in the long run IMO.
Some miscellaneous category-related things I'd also like to see:
--Category list on the front page, ff.net-style, rather than somewhere you have to click through to see. --A Multimedia or Metatag category for the huge cross-media metatags (e.g. "Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms"). --A Radio & Audio category! There are probably more broad categories that could be pulled out of Other Media, but that's at the top of my wishlist.
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Post by shonanonnie on Oct 5, 2012 10:23:50 GMT
I am very strongly in favor of "Asian animation & comics" rather than "Asian cartoons & comics". As the name of an umbrella category under which anime would be put, it feels much more appropriate, because (a) shared root word: anime/animation, and (b) the word "cartoons" as referring to animated material (rather than political cartoons) has this implied baggage of "for kids" that is much more applicable to Western cartoons than it is for anime. (Not all Western cartoons are for kids, and plenty of anime IS for kids, but just in terms of general patterns.) I guess I would say that anime and cartoons use the same medium (animation) but occupy different spaces culturally, to the point where it doesn't really fit to call anime "cartoons".
But of course, this is STILL just one person's gut feeling, not a fandom consensus.
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Post by an0n on Oct 5, 2012 10:50:36 GMT
I'd like:
-subcategories in RPF, including at least Sports, Politics & History, Music and Actors (or maybe "TV & Film Personalities") - a section for Web Series that's separate from Other Media and some consensus on where things like fic about Vlogs would go (RPF or Web Series?) and where Let's Plays would go? (Web Series or Video Games or RPF if it's fic about the Let's Player rather than the Let's Play?) - Titles that start with "The" NOT being sorted under "T" - multimedia tags not cluttering up the categories, making small book fandoms look huge
Most of all though, I'd love some mechanism where you can tell the archive what category you want a fandom to be in if you're the first person to add it. Maybe a pop up box that says "This fandom is new! Would you like to add it to a category?" and then a ticky box list so you can indicate from the outset that you mean the book fandom not the videogame or the viral marketing ARG etc
I'd also like if that tied into the archive prompting different formats for different categories. If the system made you enter an author and a title when you added a book fandom, sorting the Books & Lit fandom would actually be doable!
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Post by samjohnsson on Oct 5, 2012 12:46:19 GMT
@dash As a wrangler vol and user*, I guess I'd be okay with "Asian Animation & Comics" (it makes me ask if we're going to add "French Print & Video Animation" for the bande dessinée, etc), but I have qualms about using region names that are spottily defined, and it makes me ask where American-produced anime would go. I'd much rather have A&M&M&M If they decide to go forward with something as blatantly Anglo-centric as "Eastern ...", I will scream. A lot. Also: the front page is a fight I've stopped fighting - I don't even use it any more. The empty landing page design is loved by certain people, ergo...
@an0n: amen! But getting media subcategories requires getting the Coders to change the top-level tag structure, as the Media Category type doesn't have displayed options for metatags or subtags. The K-Drama and J-Drama tags that were mentioned in the meme are Fandom metatags. So, as a theme that we'll keep returning to I'm sure, I suspect Wrangling could be convinced...once we get the code. Re: Initial "The": open code.google.com/p/otwarchive/issues/detail?id=1143 and note the dates. Sam. * (yes, I have other hats - I left them in the car)
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smurf
New Member
Posts: 3
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Post by smurf on Oct 5, 2012 13:12:38 GMT
Also: the front page is a fight I've stopped fighting - I don't even use it any more. The empty landing page design is loved by certain people, ergo... Somehow the giant "hi!" surprises me every time. And the next second I want to go in and put a proper capital H in there.
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Post by anon on Oct 5, 2012 14:16:36 GMT
As an Asian fan of anime and manga, "Asian Cartoons & Comics" or "Eastern Cartoons & Comics" are rather alienating. The word Eastern has a Western-centric connotation and, well, cartoons & comics have been terms used those who do not know about anime, manga, manhua and manhwa, i.e. Japanese comics, Japenese cartoons, etc, to describe them. They're terms that outsiders used and are alienating to fans within the communities imo.
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Post by foxinthestars on Oct 5, 2012 14:21:58 GMT
My suggestion: start with a good user poll/comment-taking period. Anything else is probably premature, and it would be a show of good faith.
Personally, as long as Anime/Manga doesn't get merely lumped in with Comics & Animation ("merely" meaning one big ball with no subcategories --- which in fairness I haven't heard anyone suggest), I don't have really strong preferences myself, ie subcategories vs. finer top-level categories.
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elf
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Post by elf on Oct 5, 2012 16:07:35 GMT
I have heard the occasional "why not put all the animation-and-comics-ish art together in one category?" from a few people--who aren't involved in any kind of comics/manga/manhua/manhwa fandoms. Fans who are in those fandoms usually speak up quickly and say no, grouping entirely disparate fandoms together for the sake of simplicity in labeling is a bad idea.
Nobody who cares about the fandoms wants that; occasionally, people who aren't involved with them wonder if putting them all together would work. The question will probably continue to arise, and whoever's got spoons for it will need to say, as politely as possible, that no, thanks for trying but that's not going to be the solution we need.
I have heard (and would very much like to get these officially confirmed or denied) that there are a couple of major technical limitations on potential changes to the categories structure:
1) No subcategories allowed. There are top-level media categories (Movies, TV, etc.), and there will be no subsections like "TV series" vs "Mini-series" vs "TV movie," nor "Broadcast TV show" vs "Cable-only TV show." Movies won't be sorted by decade or rating; Comics-and-cartoons won't be sorted by source company or by type--there's not "Superhero cartoons" and "Other cartoons." Which means Anime-and-Manga isn't going to have regional subsections, which might ameliorate some of the problems.
2) Limit on the number of main categories. I'm not sure if this is "no additional categories whatsoever," but there's no willingness to split the current Anime-and-Manga into two or three or five top-level categories.
In order to find solutions, we need to know what's technically *possible.* If those two things aren't allowed, we need to know (1) why not? The first could be a matter of major code restructuring; the second is not; and (2) if the categories must work within the current structure, with only the labels being changeable, how cooperative will the staff be to working with fans to find something that works for as many people as possible?
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Post by an0n on Oct 5, 2012 16:54:02 GMT
@an0n: amen! But getting media subcategories requires getting the Coders to change the top-level tag structure, as the Media Category type doesn't have displayed options for metatags or subtags. The K-Drama and J-Drama tags that were mentioned in the meme are Fandom metatags. So, as a theme that we'll keep returning to I'm sure, I suspect Wrangling could be convinced...once we get the code. Re: Initial "The": open code.google.com/p/otwarchive/issues/detail?id=1143 and note the dates. Thank you for that information. I'm sad the problem of the The has been lingering so long but I'm glad that it's at least logged somewhere as a known issue. Re: fandom meta tags: those really don't fill the same need as subcategories. Clicking a meta tag takes you to a list of the fics tagged under that meta tag. A subcategory would let you filter down to see a list of the relevant fandoms. Paging through all the works in a sports rpf fandom meta tag at 20 works to a page, hoping to spot something that strikes my fancy would even worse than the current set up, imo.
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Post by samjohnsson on Oct 5, 2012 17:07:37 GMT
I have heard (and would very much like to get these officially confirmed or denied) that there are a couple of major technical limitations on potential changes to the categories structure: 1) No subcategories allowed. There are top-level media categories (Movies, TV, etc.), and there will be no subsections like "TV series" vs "Mini-series" vs "TV movie," nor "Broadcast TV show" vs "Cable-only TV show." Movies won't be sorted by decade or rating; Comics-and-cartoons won't be sorted by source company or by type--there's not "Superhero cartoons" and "Other cartoons." Which means Anime-and-Manga isn't going to have regional subsections, which might ameliorate some of the problems. 2) Limit on the number of main categories. I'm not sure if this is "no additional categories whatsoever," but there's no willingness to split the current Anime-and-Manga into two or three or five top-level categories. In order to find solutions, we need to know what's technically *possible.* If those two things aren't allowed, we need to know (1) why not? The first could be a matter of major code restructuring; the second is not; and (2) if the categories must work within the current structure, with only the labels being changeable, how cooperative will the staff be to working with fans to find something that works for as many people as possible? Let me say this up front: I am not a CatChange person, nor do I want to be. That said, things wot I see from the various vantage points I can reach: 1) Under the current code attributes for Media Tags: no, subsections aren't currently possible. Current "subsections", such as K-Drama, are done as Fandom metatags. It might be possible to allow metatags and subtags on Category Tags, but I'm not certain, and it would require some base-level switches to be thrown. 2) AFAIK, there's no limit beyond rationality - there isn't a hard-coded list. Part of the setup discussion I saw scroll by at one point was "how many categories need changing and do we want to increase or decrease the number", which tells me it is very flexible. Keep in mind, looking at the source, the media.rb file was last changed three years ago. ( For those playing along at home.) So it's probably in need of a good swift kick anyway.
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