1) Anthropomorphic doesn't belong under "real person fiction" because nobody looking for it will think to look there. ("Ooh I heard about this awesome fic about tags hanging out together in a bar! I'll go look for it! Under... real people fic!") It may make sense after it's found, but the logic of the fandom arrangements should make the most sense to people viewing the archive for the first time, not to people who've worked with it long enough to know how tag wrangling tries to sort things.
I'm content with it being in "other media" unless/until it either grows big enough to need a category of its own (eep) or finds itself conceptually tied to some other large category.
2) I would look for Wrestling under "RPF - Sports," but I neither read nor write wrestling fic, and don't watch WWE, so my opinion is a total outsider's there. As someone not in the fandom, that's where I'd try to find it.
3) Possibly, there could be an "Other [category]" in each category as well, for those fandoms that don't fit the current structure? (Games is lacking Card Games, LARPs, "playground games," and some others. None of which I expect to be large categories, but should go under Games.) Not sure what happens to subfandoms that don't fit one of the current categories.
4) If "Visual Novel" is what I'm thinking of, I'd prefer it to be "Interactive Novel." If it's basically a movie tied to text, where the reader doesn't make choices, I'd prefer it to go under books, not games. "Interactive Novel" would also cover the "Fighting Fantasy" gamebooks, which were something like choose-your-own-adventures with dice rolling and character sheets.
5) Games: Possibly, "Board Games" could be "Board and Card Games." Or even, "Board, Card and Dice Games." (Gotta have a category for all that unwritten Yahtzee fic out there.) (Although I joke, there was at least one collectible dice games to go with the collectible card game craze, and it could have fic without belonging in Anthropomorphic.)
6) Animation etc - Definitely need to know what to do with "other" animated and comics fandoms. (Dark Horse comics, f'rex. And various indie comics.) Also, it probably needs a TV category as well as Films.
7) Where does fic about youtube vids belong? "Other media?"
8) I think I'd like TV Commercials to go under Live Action TV.
Anthro wranglers asked to be able to put fandoms under both RPF and Other, because we are dealing with cases where we're forcing an artificial split on existing fandoms. (Example: "Yuletide - Fandom" is currently synned to "Fandom - Fandom" because it can't be synned to either "Yuletide RPF" or "Yuletide (Anthropomorfic)", and these are two separate fandoms in two separate categories.)
Real life people and real life objects should be able to be placed in the same fandom without us having to do bizarre wrangling contortions to deal with them. That's all we're asking.
ETA: In addition, almost all the Anthro objects are real life objects, software programs, robots, etc. Since Cat Change expressed a preference for a minimum of items in the "Other" bin, we felt "Real Life" was the best fit available.
As for the AO3 Tags fics from last Yuletide, "AO3 Tags" is currently a subfandom of "Fandom - Fandom", meaning it's not part of the Anthro family at all, because not all the works anthopomorphize the tags. And it has 9 works, woohoo!
For anthro that's RL objects, that makes some sense. For anthro that's meta-concepts, like the Delicious/Pinboard/Fandom fic, or Time/Space, or various other concepts, it doesn't make sense to put them under RPF. (It occurs to me that I have no idea if they're current wrangled under Anthro or Fandom.)
I would not mind if some (or all, for that matter) anthro wound up under RPF and other, but putting it all in RPF seems counter-intuitive.
I think we were looking at having it under both? But I'm not 100% sure, because it's been several months. (I think we talked about this in the chat, didn't we?) It's... a spectrum. Trust me that Anthro wranglers regularly tear out our hair, all while chuckling helplessly.
4) Visual novels aren't always interactive, though. Or more exactly, the terms as it's used in English mixes both interactive and non interactive novels. At the same time, those interactive novels called Visual Novels are slightly different from the usual interactive books and other interactive media, so renaming it would be confusing as most people searching for a Visual Novel fandom wouldn't think of looking in an "Interactive Novels" category.
That's something that even fans of Visual Novels (both interactive and non-interactive) can't agree about, but I think part of the reasons is that some non-interactive visual novels have a game console version. Between that and how the term is used in English, many people just consider them games or at least something closer to a game than to anything else.
Thank you for all the feedback! We will keep in mind your suggestions for anthropomorphic, wrestling, TV Commercials, and the Board Games submedium name. In answer to 3), fandoms that don’t fit an existing submedium go directly under the top category (in this case, “Games”) and are listable using the “No submedia” button. For 4), “Visual Novel” seems to be the most commonly used term. They are generally marketed/distributed as games. 6) Other animated and comics fandoms would currently fall directly under the “Animation, Comics, Manga & Other Sequential Art” category (and would of course be filterable by language and country of origin). We’re open to considering other possibilities, and would welcome suggestions for ways to unambiguously name other submedia under this category.
Comment on Call for Feedback on Category Change Proposal
Elf (Elf_Herself) Wed 18 Sep 2013 05:57PM UTC
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briar_pipe Wed 18 Sep 2013 10:01PM UTC
Last Edited Wed 18 Sep 2013 10:03PM UTC
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Elf (Elf_Herself) Wed 18 Sep 2013 10:15PM UTC
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briar_pipe Wed 18 Sep 2013 10:21PM UTC
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Meroko (Guest) Thu 19 Sep 2013 12:41AM UTC
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Elf (Elf_Herself) Thu 19 Sep 2013 12:57AM UTC
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Meroko (Guest) Thu 19 Sep 2013 01:46AM UTC
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LadyOscar (Category_Change_Workgroup) Thu 19 Sep 2013 04:48PM UTC
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