I suggested this in the other thread about Fanfic Recs, but I thought that thread is kinda long and boggy-bogged so I'm splitting it off here.

So, my idea is that we start a FanWorks/ namespace.

This would be a subpage for a work, like Fanfic Recs is now, but instead of having reviews for a few fanfics that tropers enjoy, it would just be an index, and it would index every fan work that has a wiki page in a simple bulleted list.

For a prototype of what this might look like, check out My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (Non-Canon). It's an index with subsections for fanfics, abridged series, fan games, webcomics, and so on, and it's just a list of all the My Little Pony fan works that have wiki pages.

Advantages of this, off the top of my head:

• Organization! It gets all the fan works for a work in one place. It makes sense that they should be grouped and indexed together, right?
• Integration! As a subpage of the work, it would be connected with the source work, which I count as an upside.
• Non-duplication! The current thing we have with Fanfic Recs is sort of redundant with the reviews section. It doesn't really make sense from the perspective of the modern wiki, right? This doesn't have that problem because it's neutral.
• Comprehensiveness...ation! Instead of only listing fanfics that tropers have reviewed and recommended, it would list all the fan works, which has some lovely side benefits:
  • It would actually be a better tool for finding works you might be interested in, just cuz of the larger volume of works listed.
  • It would encourage people to create wiki pages for fan works, which is always a good thing. We want works to have wiki pages. There's this tendency with fanfics to post external links instead of linking to the wiki page, and this should help fight that, I think.

So yeah. I think this is a good idea.

I don't think it necessarily has to replace Fanfic Recs. No comment on that front. I suppose there's no reason they couldn't coexist. Personally, I don't give a damn about the Fanfic Recs system we currently have...I just think it would be nice to have a way of organizing this stuff better.

I rather like that. I said in the other thread I saw a FanDerivative/ namespace that would hold the list of these works that had wiki pages. Maybe they could serve as indexes too like the FIM page.

My personal opinion is that we should cut fanfic recs entirely, but at the moment it looks like we're just cutting the explicit recommendations and going from there.

A listing of articles about fanworks would be nice, considering some pages already do it inside the article proper. Not sure if it has to be a new subpage, but whatever works.

I don't like the idea of making namespaces because of their sources. Only if they are really distinct, then we should make one.

Otherwise, keep the namespaces split by medium.

We're talking about a subpage namespace, not a media namespace. So FanWorks.Magic The Gathering would be an index of fan works based on Magic: The Gathering, not a fan work called "Magic: The Gathering".

That is a better idea.

Sounds like a great idea, but how would be make sure some random troper doesn't use it to just add any crappy 1 paragraph fic (or something to that effect) they make to the list? Would this need some sort of guidelines regarding that?

edited 31st Mar '12 7:51:59 AM by Elbruno

We'll add redlinks for fics there. We do it all the time with any works.

Probably, we would need a template for such pages that points out what is not to be done there.

Also, should we crowner such a namespace creation?

-misread-

If this goes forward I would also like to put forward the idea of an index to index these indexes.

edited 31st Mar '12 7:56:52 AM by Jicragg

Yeah, I guess.

We're not talking about external links, we're talking about wiki pages. If the fic doesn't have a wiki page, there's no point listing it.

edited 31st Mar '12 8:03:18 AM by troacctid

I mean as redlinks. From what I understand (and from what Septimus said) the plan is to have an index with fan works, if they have an article then great, but if they don't we put the redlink. How can we stop people from just entry pimping crappy stuff made by themselves as redlinks?

I though that the idea was precisely to put the redlinks there as well, it'd make the missing pages more notable so people would create them, given the "easier to find" thing as well....

No, that's Works Needing Summary.

OK, should we crowner this?

Crowner hooked.

Danke.

I prefer FanDerivative/ over FanWork, just because there are other threads going on about creating a Fan Work namespace for things that aren't fanfic, Abridged Series, etc.

DerivativeWorks/ would be another option for this namespace.

Could we maybe make the crowner neutral regarding the name of the new namespace? I think the namespace is a good idea, but I don't think FanWorks/ is a good name for it (because that's possibly going to become a works namespace), so I'm not going to vote up on the crowner as is.

edited 1st Apr '12 1:41:56 PM by Nocturna

I think we shouldn't group works just by their status as fan/original. We treat them all the same.

Did that.

edited 1st Apr '12 1:44:57 PM by SeptimusHeap

I said it in another thread and I'll say it again: "Separate namespaces aren't implying some kind of medium hierarchy."

"Derivative Works" is an interesting choice because it changes the function slightly to include official derivative works (like Licensed Games and whatnot). Is that something we'd want? I'm honestly not sure.

I would rather have Fan Works in the namespace for the appropriate medium: be it writing, film, video game, or whatever. There's no sense to have films in one namespace, and fanwork films in another.

The point is making a distinction between the canon works and the fanmade stuff based on said canons.

Bumping for more votes.

Calling crowner. 17 yeas to 4 nays in favor of creating the subpages.

Swapped crowners.

edited 4th Apr '12 11:42:31 AM by MetaFour