But right now they're just all in the huge top-category with no subcategories at all, which is even more unwieldy.
And there's not really much point in making a subcategory for, just tossing a number out there, three fandoms that actually exist on the archive. The proposal says that they aren't fixed and as more fandoms get added, more subcats can too, but having too many overcomplicates thing.
Oh, no, if it's something with, like, two fandoms, that makes perfect sense, but animated movies and television shows should definitely be split out, and I don't really see why we're giving Marvel and DC (both commercial brand names) top billing when we could have "comic books" or "comic serials." which would satisfy a lot of things that do belong in the same category without giving a privileged place to a commercial brand. (I say this as someone who writes Marvel fic, BTW)
Yeah, why wouldn't the tree be more like (Ridiculously long top-level media category) > Comic Books > Marvel Comics? And Cartoons > Movies + Cartoons > TV? This doesn't seem well-planned at all.
You're right, I was a bit unfair there; I just have this real pet peeve about weirdly-organized things, and the second image with the Jenga-like clutter made me so irritated I wasn't thinking about my language.
Completely agree about the commercial brand/publisher sub categories, especially as it doesn't seem consistent with the rest of the structure. Plus it seems a bit US-centric for an Archive that claims to be committed to being open and welcoming to international audiences.
A concern we ran into with these types of submedia is that it’s difficult to come up with a name that unambiguously describes what’s in them. For example, to be useful as a submedium, “comic books” should exclude manga, manhwa, and any other existing submedia, but depending on a user’s language, region, etc., that’s not necessarily going to be obvious from the name. We’re definitely open to suggestions for ways around the issue.
I see the issue with something as vague as "comic books" being misleading. I totally think manga/manwha are valid subcategories from a format perspective. Someone suggested breaking out "superhero comics," which aren't a format per se, but which handles the problem of the Big Two as massive fandoms and makes it clear what doesn't belong in that category. Since the vast majority of floppies would end up there, that would be cool. There would be limited crossover with manga/manwha and graphic novels. It might solve the problem of just having a giant soup in the main category-- the number of comic books that would end up in the main category would be significantly smaller.
I work in comics, and the way to distinguish is usually to refer to periodical comics as floppies, but I don't know how ubiquitous that term is.
Y'all are doing a great job with this. All of your responses have been well-thought-out, reasonable, and I definitely feel like my opinions have been considered. Thanks a ton to everybody working on it.
Floppies is, I think, a pretty well-known term if you're immersed in comics fandom and basically totally unknown if you're not. I read comics for years without ever coming across it, because I bought trades instead and was only a casual reader, and then learned it once I actually got into DC and then Marvel fandom rather than just reading some of the titles. So it probably has no issues for users who are already firmly in the fandom, but would be opaque to a new fan hitting the archive as their first stop for fic.
I was one of the people who suggested "Superhero Comics" and I'm not in love with the option, which is likely to create significant headaches (is "Sandman" a superhero comic? Do all Vertigo titles belong in that category by virtue of being published by one of the big two, regardless of whether they fit there at first glance? And so on and so forth) but I think it's still better than the current proposal. I've seen people suggest "American Comics" as an alternative, which seems like it might potentially be useful, but that does have some overlap with the new "Country of Origin" tags in ways that I can see might seem undesirable if you look from an archive organization standpoint rather than purely a user interface one.
For me, I think the reason I like "Superhero" is because of things like Vertigo-- many Vertigo titles are adamantly not superhero comics and don't really belong thematically with the rest of the DC titles. Sandman is a little trickier, because it is a comic with superheroes, but not a superhero comic. But, then, things can belong to multiple subgroups.
I don't think "American" comics works because not all comics in that format are American.
Comment on Call for Feedback on Category Change Proposal
dizmo Wed 18 Sep 2013 07:29PM UTC
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