Folclore (Fanlore)

Here's a roundup of stories about literary and creative fandom that might be of interest to fans:

• A first-person write-up of a woman's entry into online fandom and fan fiction writing was published in The Cultural Gutter this past month, and likely echoes the experience of many a fan, particularly those who take part in fan activities around LiveJournal and Dreamwidth.
• An interesting discussion took place earlier this year on Language Log about the Tolkien estate's effort to censor use of the word "Tolkien", highlighting the problems fans may run into when creating fandom-related works. The fanartist on Zazzle who received the cease and desist order in the cited case countered the attack creatively, adding new items to their store which commented on the censorship effort.
• Many discussions about copyright and trademark infringement revolve around the issue of intellectual theft. However, some professional artists are of the opinion that "theft" can never be left out of the creative process. In a post about his own creative history, artist and writer Austin Kleon suggests that the "genealogy of ideas" is a complex thing and will always reveal ties to other ideas and works — that's an idea close to the heart of fannish creativity, and we appreciate seeing it proclaimed from the professional side of the fence.

If you have experienced events such as the case of the Tolkien fan discussed above, why not post them on Fanlore? These conflicts are a part of our history — help preserve it. Fanlore is open to contributions by all fans for any and all fandoms.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, event, or link you think we should know about you can submit it in three easy ways: comment on the most recent Links Roundup on transformativeworks.org, LJ or DW, or give @OTW_News a shoutout on Twitter. Links are welcome in all languages!

This update was contributed by OTW Staff member Claudia Rebaza.

Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

It's the middle of 2011, and the Fanlore wiki committee is feeling the need for some new energy and new enthusiasm. We're also short on members, so we're putting out a call: we are looking for more fans to join the Fanlore Wiki Committee!

What's the wiki committee, exactly? The wiki committee is a group of volunteers which works to keep Fanlore up and running.

What projects is the wiki committee working on? One of our big areas of focus this year is trying to increase fannish diversity on the wiki, and on outreach to fan communities which are (so far) under-represented on Fanlore. Lately we've also been working on shifting how categories work on the wiki.

Do I already have to be an OTW volunteer in order to join the wiki committee? Nope! We welcome anyone who wants to join the committee, whether or not that person is already an OTW staffer/volunteer. (Becoming an OTW staffer/volunteer is easy, we promise.)

What's the time commitment? The wiki committee usually meets via chat for one or two hours every two weeks. We do the rest of our work via email and via Basecamp, the website used by all of the OTW committees to work collaboratively on our various projects.

I don't know how to edit wiki pages, is that a problem? Not at all. We can teach you! And also, some of our work (especially the outreach work) doesn't involve actual wiki editing at all.

Are you looking for any skills in particular? We could definitely use some CSS experts; we're also especially interested in folks who are enthusiastic about helping us to reach out to communities currently under-represented on the wiki.

I think I'm interested. What do I do? Drop a comment on this post or contact us and we'll get back to you asap!

I don't have the time for this, but I know someone else who might. Feel free to spread the word in your own journal or via email to anyone you think would be a good fit.

Do you edit Fanlore or would you like to do so? Now is the time to learn how. The OTW's Wiki-committee will host an introductory chat to editing Fanlore. The chat is aimed at both current and new editors.

The chat will be held on Saturday May 28 at 4 a.m. UTC (what time is it in my timezone?) in OTW's public chatroom on Campfire. The chatroom can be accessed at https://fanarchive.campfirenow.com/e79cc

Fanlore, a fandom wiki, is devoted to preserving the history of transformative fanworks and the fandoms from which they have arisen.

Fanlore, the OTW's fan history wiki project, is looking for help organizing the anime and manga areas of the wiki in anticipation of trying to beef up the content. In particular, they want fans familiar with the material to weigh in on the underlying category structures: anime vs. manga vs. comics vs. cartoons vs. animation. As they sum up:

We’re hoping for a system that will accommodate many needs, including those of manhua, manhwa, and a variety of animation and comics fandoms from around the world. If you have knowledge in these areas, we definitely want to hear from you! We hope to find a few fans who are excited about the prospect of chronicling and preserving anime or manga fandoms and their histories, who can help us 1) figure out how best to structure this corner of the wiki and 2) reach out to anime and manga communities for more participation once we have a good structure in place.

If you have the knowledge to help, please comment on that post or contact the Wiki Committee through their contact form.

Edited to add: a revised proposal is now up at the Fanlore dreamwidth community. Please go by and weigh in!

Happy April! Thanks to everyone who made our March happy with donations to the OTW! We hope we'll have an equally happy April with our April showers challenge!

Here at the Archive of Our Own we love seeing the numbers of works and fandoms grow! Since we entered Open Beta in November 2009 we've added 7567 fandoms and 148,092 works - we love being able to come to the AO3 for a quick fix of all sorts of fannish love! However, there's a whole host of fannish deliciousness which hasn't found a home here yet. There are tons of wonderful Sailor Moon fanworks out there, but only 174 Sailor Moon works on the AO3. The X-Files had a thriving fannish community on Usenet back in the day, but only 1088 X-Files works have made it over to the AO3. Figure skating RPF has a lively presence on Livejournal and elsewhere, but there are only 288 Figure Skating RPF works to be found on the AO3. We love the way fandom has found a home in all sorts of places - each fannish community has its own culture and its own hangouts - but we also want to help ensure that all that fannish awesome doesn't disappear when sites go down.

This is where our April showers promotion comes in! For the month of April, we hope you'll shower the Archive with your old works! If you have works sitting on a harddrive, buried in your old emails, tucked away in a box of zines in your basement, or filed away on your Livejournal, now is the time to upload. You can use our handy import feature to grab them easily from elsewhere on the web (many thanks to coder Rebecca who recently spiffed up the importer to make it work better), backdate them to show when you first wrote them, and use our pseuds feature to post them under your old fannish names (mulder4eva1993, anyone?).

Fandom isn't just about the fanworks, but about the awesome culture surrounding them! If you'd like to document your fandom in other ways, why not add something to our sister project Fanlore? You could create a profile of an awesome fan from your fandom, add details of the great fandom debates you have seen, give details of the major archives and challenges, or just add in a few characters' names. Record your history for fans of the future!

We'll be highlighting a different fandom for importing love every day of April! Follow our Twitter @ao3org to check out the fandom of the day! (You can also add works in fandoms not on our list - the more the merrier!) Tag your uploaded works April Showers Challenge - at the end of the month we'll round up all the works with this tag and post stats on how many were uploaded for each fandom.

We kick off today with an oldie but goodie - Star Wars! Use the force, fandom!

April showers of fannish love! Bring us your history!

Mirrored from an original post on the Archive of Our Own.

The Wiki Committee have revised Fanlore's policy on Fandom as a Category and have posted the revised version of the policy change to the Fanlore wiki. You can read it here: http://fanlore.org/wiki/Fanlore:Fandom_as_a_Category.

We invite discussion on the new policy at the Fanlore Dreamwidth community here: http://fanlore.dreamwidth.org/23175.html. If there are no problems or issues that require a change, the policy will become final in seven days after posting (4/28/2010).

Thanks!

Our fannish wiki project, Fanlore, is both fun and useful! Allow us to demonstrate:

Ever gafiated because your fanpair couldn't understand that trickyfish would never pass the broccoli test? Ever have a BNF brit-pick your Pros curtainfic only to declare that you'd been totally fanon-Jossed by the hivemind? Ever suspected a profic of being a fusion from your gateway fandom with the serial numbers filed off by a flounced BOFQ? Ever had your AMTDI badfic kripked so that you had to fridge your Mary Sue, then during machete beta realized you're circling the id vortex? Ever had your C6D PWP hit someone's embarrassment squick, and regretfully offered them brain bleach? Ever been flamed for saying someone's BSO has too much manpain to be a GQMF based on fannish osmosis? Ever made Paul Gross arms because FIAWOL? Ever followed your BFF's fannish drift into WNGWJLEO tinhat territory, only to find yourself in a kerfluffle in which lurkers support you in email after Snacky's law goes into effect, then declared FIJAGH? Ever realized the little black dress in your vampire AU GSF is suffering from a bad case of zombie hand?

Well, luckily Fanlore is at the ready, and we can all avoid disaster!

Support the OTW, and enrich fandom's vocabulary of experiences.

* Fanlore has hit 10,000 articles!!! We're not 100 percent sure, but we think the 10,000th article was on fan Virginia Lee Smith. For Valentine's Day, consider adding someone or something you love to Fanlore!

* Author, 17, Says It's 'Mixing,' Not Plagiarism: A young German novelist has published a bestselling novel called Axolotl Roadkill which cites--or as the author says, remixes--chunks of various other published works without attribution. While some have called this plagiarism, others see the quotations as thematic, and the accusations have not stopped the book from being nominated for a major prize.

* NPR did a story about World's Fair Use Day called When Fair Use Isn't Fair: the story features interviews with Jonathan McIntosh, Public Knowledge president Gigi Sohn, and others.

* Last but not least, friend of the OTW Nina Paley, the animator who made Sita Sings The Blues, has been making "minute memes" for QuestionCopyright.org. Her latest work is called All Creative Work Is Derivative; that link will take you to a description of her process in making this video.