Categories

This is a list of the tags we have, and a discussion of how they might evolve.

Current Tags

• fan - Someone with an amateur interest in fandom. They pay to do it
• pro - Someone with a professional interest. Author, publisher, actor, artist, illustrator, scientist, journalist, academic etc. They get paid to do it.
• mundane - Someone from the outside world, perhaps a famous figure or science guest or actor.
• artist - Anyone who produces art, including video

• uk,ireland,europe,nz,us,asia,australia,canada,world - Broad range to avoid too small a list.

• fanspeak - fannish words and concepts. Some overlap with publishing and conrunning.
• convention - Conventions, festivals etc, only apply to the master page for a convention sequence like Boskone. [mlo: That means that uniquely-named conventions which are not series don't appear on convention tag lists.]
• conseries - A series of conventions
• onetimecon - A one-off convention
• condex - All conventions, a very long list.
• bid - A bid for a convention
• bidding - The bidding process for a convention
• worldcon,eastercon,eurocon,westercon,canvention - For special major conventions, Worldcon, Eastercon, Westercon, Eurocon, Canvention. We need something for NZ and Australia. [mlo: I'd be inclined to limit this to Eastercon, Westercon and Worldcon as these are far more influential than the others. There are a *lot* of national conventions and we have to draw a line somewhere. I'd not include Nasfic, either.). It is a matter of perspective, I think Aussies, New Zelanders and Canadians are proud of their natons. JRB
• conrunning - The mechanics of running a convention, famous incidents

• award - Awards, but only apply to the key pages for award series like the Hugos
• fanfund - Fanfunds
• fanhistory - Articles about what fandom is like, including reminiscence.
• club - clubs and writing groups and writing workshops
• admin - for internal organisation of the site, templates etc
• hoax - Hoaxes
• feud - Feuds
• media - non-written fandoms, tv, film, anime etc. [mlo: Note that to the extent that they have their own disconnected fandoms, they don't really belong here. (Though I wouldn't spend time deleting pages unless they conflicted with fannish pages.)]
• apa
• publication - All those below
• fanzine,apazine,perzine,newszine,prozine,semiprozine,fanthology - Different sorts of fan publication, fanzine, apazine, perzine, newszine, prozine, semiprozine, newsletter
• show - Fannish musicals, plays, films etc
• store - Place to buy things, bricks and mortar or online
• venue - Building that holds cons, or a slan shack house.
• locale - A geographical place
• publisher - A company, ranging from a small press to a multinational.
• publishing - The mechanics of producing books, fanzines etc, cf conrunning for cons. [mlo: This was an old idea when Fancy 3 was just starting; It no longer seems very compelling.] I like this one, it is a rabbithole of odd terms, and has plenty of entries. Could be a list at the end of a feature article, but it would be a big task to write that. JRB

• abomination - ? [mlo: It's traditional for a few editorial remarks to creep in...]
• obscure fact - ? [mlo: This is in the category of "it seemed like a good idea at the time". The idea was to tag things people just browsing might find amusing. We should discuss whether it retains enough value.]
• obsolete - ? [mlo: I think this may still be useful. It designates usages, mainly, which are obsolete. Let's discuss, as it might be as useful turned into something like Obsolete at the top of the definition.]
• food - food and drink [mlo: mildly amusing, but otherwise of dubious value]
• first fandom - First Fandom [mlo: Keep. This is our founding generation and I want to give them special recognition. They are people who committed fanac before WW II]
• book - A notable book, series of books, or a short story, length is not an issue format is.
• bibliography - A list of books, fanzines, prozines, etc.
• initialism - Things referred to by their initials
• penname,nickname - Former as authors, latter as people [mlo: Is this a useful distinction? It's clear enough, but is it useful?] Pennames for pros should be invisible redirects. Nicknames for fans have some interest, but again would better be part of the fan's main page. So I think its clutter and would remove it. JRB

• fancast - Spoken fan publication, audio or video
• filk - Filk singing, includes people, conventions, groups, clubs, musicals

• tolkien - people, clubs, conventions about that
• fancy1,fancy2 - containing content from Fancyclopedia 1 or Fancyclopedia 2
• list - lists of things [mlo: drop] JRB keep [mlo: Ah. I see what it's used for. Agreed, keep.]
• website - websites
• misc - A catchall for anything not above, so all pages have a tag

Changes made

• Get rid of ted tag. JRB [mlo: agree]
• The statuette, author, bibliographer, historian, and fantasy tags have very few members, and should go. JRB [mlo: agree]
• Merge perzine tag into fanzine. JRB [mlo: agree. I wonder if clubzine is a distinction worth keeping?]
• Remove tag email. JRB [mlo: agree]
• Remove editor tag, splitting into fan or pro. Too many people edit as part of other things. JRB [mlo: agreed]
• Get rid of tag audio, it has 4 members, and no-one thinks to use it. JRB [mlo: agree]
• lovecraft - [mlo: I'm not sure there's enough Lovecraft to warrant it]. JRB delete it
• statuette - Sculpture [mlo: really? Are there ever going to be enough of them? Are they interesting enough?] Deleted. JRB
• audio - [mlo: what is this? Is there enough to be worth keeping given that we have fancast?]. Deleted JRB
• Publisher tag removed from people, publisher link added if important. JRB
• Add conrunning tag for articles about how conventions are organised, and memories on how they went. Reserve the convention tag for the event itself. JRB.
• catchphrase - ? [mlo: Sadly, no longer much used. It //used// to be a proud and lonely thing to be a fan.] Dropped
• collector - Collector dropped
• small press - A small company that publishes things. See discussion at end. dropped

Discussion

JRB for ideas liked by John Bray, MLO by Mark Olsen

• New tags need approval from Mark. JRB
• I wonder if clubzine is a distinction worth keeping MLO. Possibly JRB [mlo: Let's keep it for now then.]
• Merge semiprozine into prozine, they are both sold, even if one loses money! JRB [mlo: I'm not sure. There are so damn many of the semiprozines.]
• Writing courses like Clarion should be conventions, not clubs. JRB [mlo: They're repeated annually with different people. Neither tag is perfect, but they "feel" a bit more like a convention.]
• For something in a category that's too common to be in the main index, add a leading underscore. So while Boskone is a 'convention', Boskone 14 is a '_convention', Hugo is an 'award', 2008 Best Novel Hugo is an '_award'. JRB [mlo: I see a good case for this, but let's discuss it a bit more first. What do we do when we have something like most Eastercons that ought to have both "convention" and "_convention"?] Eastercons should have tag eastercon and not convention, can we think of other examples where Con X is particularly important? JRB
• Add _admin tags to all redirection pages using "module redirection", or "(Did you mean ...". JRB [mlo: let's discuss -- I don't understand the implications of this]
• Remove tag obsolete. JRB [mlo: let's discuss -- I'd like to look at the category in detail first]
• Remove tag websites, everything has a website. JRB [mlo: The idea was to tag pages //specifically// about websites. Let's review]
• Add tag project, for all those fannish projects to archive, catalogue change the world etc. Would cover many websites like SF Encyclopedia etc, so could take over from website tag. JRB [mlo: ??]
• Work on pages with multiple meanings so we have no pages with incompatible tags merely because they share the same name. JRB [mlo: let's discuss -- I don't understand the implications of this]
• Now tag collector has gone replace with backlinks from the Collector article. [mlo: agree.]

This could apply to all sorts of roles, editor, historian etc. JRB [mlo: let's discuss -- I don't understand the implications of this, though it sounds sensible]

• Publisher is currently half companies, half people. The latter is an anomalous role given we don't have editor etc. We could change publisher to press to be the counterpart to small_press, but its not a common term. It might be easiest to just ensure publisher is in people's descriptions, and have a backlink section as we do for editor, and not tag people. publishing_house/publisher is an alternative. JRB [mlo: I no longer think it makes sense for it to be a person -- there are far too many fanzines publishers! The question then becomes, does the remaining use warrant keeping it at all?]. I think we should rename small_press tag to be publisher, and keep the mainstream ones in that. They'd be overwhelmed, but that's good, and avoids our assessment. Get Thomas's view. JRB [thomas: tagging small presses with 'publisher' rather than 'small_press' makes sense to me. As for people, there is the borderline case of Graham Stone having published books as Graham Stone.][thomas: another alternative is imprint. It doesn't have quite the same meaning. A publisher may have multiple imprints. But users may tend to know publishers by their imprints rather than their business names (e.g., "Escape Publishing" rather than "Harlequin Australia", and "Tor" rather than "Tom Doherty Associates").]
• Change the novelty tags (food, catchphrase, nickname, obscure fact etc) into standalone pages prominent from the landing page. Obviously it would be nicer to have someone write on the history of nicknames, but we could just have the automatic backlist from a mention of the term. Not convinced that people finding one obscure fact would be hopping to others. JRB
• Either get rid of newszine (3 entries) and newsletter or populate them. Convention newsletters should really be folded into the con entries, the rest are just fanzines, which need to just reference newszine their text. JRB votes remove.