Fan works and media classification

That's a fair point—do we have links to those?

I strongly disagree: people an want thing separated in one categorisation and not in another.

For example, when cooking I might want my fruits and vegetables separated. But when gardening, it makes no sense to do so.

If that were so, then I would expect to find people arguing for Neil Gaiman's A Study in Emerald to be filed under something other than "literature"—after all, it's based on Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos.

As I said, I can believe that people often want a separation between "canon" and "non-canon"—but I don't believe that this also indicates a desire to separate fan-works away from the medium of their parent-work.

Indeed, are fan-games not considered to be video games, even when their source-works are video games? My own experience is that they are considered to be video-games indeed.

So, I think that there are two different listings here: one of "what's canon/official to this work" and one of "what works are in this medium"—and I don't agree that those are distinct without difference. I argue that they're very different.

My Games & Writing

I have seen a lot of people say the Fan Games are not true Video Games, especially from people that have a massive dislike towards Fan Works in general. In general, there are quite a few people that think fan-made content does not qualify as true media since it is in their eyes ripping something off and not giving the people they are ripping off anything in return, you may find it crazy but I see this kind of sentiment quite often. People, in general, treat Fan Works differently from original works either on purpose or not, like people have different expectations with fan-made content or nearly every wiki listening fan content separately from official content. This includes this place where on TVT we treat Fan Works separately from official works in every single other case, I don't understand why we should make some sort of special exception for this.

Edited by Ordeaux26 on May 20th 2022 at 1:39:54 AM

CM Sandboxes, MB Sandboxes

Sorry for the double post but another thing that would be it more convenient if we put all fan-made stuff on the Fan Works media category for the readers. If someone is looking for which contents are fan made and which ones are official it is going to be very confusing for them if the official stuff is lumped together with the fan-made stuff, if they both come from the same medium like a Fan Game of a Video Game, a Fan Webcomic of a Webcomic and a Fan Film of an original Film. This would also get even more confusing because in some cases people put fan-made stuff in the same tree as the official stuff which is not allowed at all and would trick people into thinking it's official and be hard to enforce.

Edited by Ordeaux26 on May 20th 2022 at 2:04:07 AM

CM Sandboxes, MB Sandboxes

I just thought I'd make the thread because I didn't want the ATT query I spun the thread from getting too long and I thought we should at least try to address The Abridged Series issue specifically because they don't belong on the Web Video/ namespace.

I don't have links to past discussions because I wasn't there for most of them. I can try to look through wiki talk to find them later.

That being said, I hate leaving things like this unresolved when there's so much inconsistency and confusion surrounding it.

Edited by MacronNotes on May 20th 2022 at 5:31:31 AM

Macron's notes

Even if there were past threads that doesn't really change the problem in that there is no clear consensus on what exactly to do with classifying Fan Works and the community opinion seems divisive at best, which is why this thread is being made.

CM Sandboxes, MB Sandboxes

The topic is spinning around the argument that people give fanworks unqiue treatement and want a visual indicator that works listed on trope pages are unofficial. I

1. Don't think that's true without seeing people being polled about it.
2. Don't think people care if a work is fanmade, all they'll see is a trope example of a fictional event. I don't know why they'd specifically look for "examples of a trope from fanworks" and not for fanwork pages.
3. Don't think it makes sense since we at TVT treat fanworks like any other work due to our notability standards, as far as I know, and there's no need to add extra labels to them.

For the record I don't strongly care where the examples are placed at as long as Media Categories FAQ has a statement on it, but every post for it mentions "some people think" and I'd just like a concrete "who?".

Btw we cut trope and work pages with hundreds of wicks and inbounds when there's a reason for it, public opinion isn't above us.

If we need consensus we just need to put a crowner here.

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

If you want proof for that you can look at basically any wiki where people list fan-made content either separately or on completely different wikis, Wikipedia also lists fan works separately in all forms no matter what. Or on this site, we have the main Fan Works page which has a list of all types of Fan Works listed separately from the main franchise pages and the Fan Works media category which is based on the Fan Works page. Again if we were to separate the various Fan Works and list them on their original medium it would render the media category and the reason for its existence completely useless. I don't personally see the reason to cause such heavy confusion when we already have a clear way it is set up.

CM Sandboxes, MB Sandboxes

I mean, I don't think bringing up fan wikis makes sense. Obviously fan content will be isolated, it's non-canon, and shouldn't be referenced on a canon-based wiki.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

The same would apply to TV Tropes. Fan-based content should not be grouped together with canon content which is what would end up happening in certain cases if we were going to do this.

CM Sandboxes, MB Sandboxes

"look at basically any wiki". We're not the other wikis and TVT never cared what other wikis do.

Fan Works is own page because concepts that exist get own pages. It's unrelated to sorting examples at trope pages, we don't make folders for like Future Works or Troper Works. We list examples per Media, and Media doesn't have Fan Works.

"we already have a clear way it is set up", this discussion being made proved that we do not.

Edited by Amonimus on May 20th 2022 at 12:55:20 PM

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

Except it's two very different cases. We're a wiki for all forms of media, and fan content is canon for that fanfic universe and has no reason to be kept more separate than two completely unrelated book series would be kept separate. If we were a wiki for, say, Harry Potter, then no, we'd have no reason to talk about My Immortal, but we're not just specific to one work. You're conflating apples and bananas here.

Edited by WarJay77 on May 20th 2022 at 5:54:55 AM

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

It is not exactly the same I will agree but my point is that people don't like when you group Fan Works together with official works especially when it's grouped together with what it is based on. That is the reason why the Fanfic namespace and Fan Works media category even exist, to begin with, because people wanted to keep it separate if we are going to separate Fanfic then it shouldn't be any different with Fan Games and Fan Films. I know some people would want that merged as well but past discussions on Fanfic have always decided to keep it separate so that is a precedent in my eyes we should follow to remain consistent.

CM Sandboxes, MB Sandboxes

I can't comment further without seeing these "some people" and "past discussions", I've already started to repeat my responses.

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~MacronNotes Would this be suitable for the crowner on the topic, or should we currently poll about the other two topics mentioned?

- Where should examples from The Abridged Series works be sorted at trope pages? Keep in mind this is not a question of if Fan Works count as Media or what Namespace The Abridged Series work pages belong to.

• Place The Abridged Series examples into Fan Works folder on trope pages.
• Place The Abridged Series examples into Web Original folder on trope pages.
• Place The Abridged Series examples into Web Video folder on trope pages.

Edited by Amonimus on May 27th 2022 at 8:36:04 PM

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

You keep saying that but your main evidence so far has been "other wikis", which I already pointed out is flawed logic because we have a completely different mission than other wikis do. In a lot of cases, separating canon and non-canon material has more to do with the nature of a wiki and less to do with anti-fanfic feelings. Maybe they do exist, but it sounds like you're jumping to a lot of conclusions here.

Maybe a decade ago, sure, the people here didn't want to conflate fanfic and literature, but times have changed. We can't assume everyone still thinks that.

Edited by WarJay77 on May 20th 2022 at 6:19:57 AM

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I feel like you are slightly misunderstanding my point. I am not using wikis to say that we should do it I am using wikis as my proof that people as a whole generally like to separate fan-made content from official content, wikis are very big and the fact this is constant is pretty telling.

I am not sure that consensus has changed enough considering how divisive this discussion already is.

CM Sandboxes, MB Sandboxes

I found this post on a thread regarding Fanfic classification from crazysamiritan that lists three prior threads on this issue. I'll just copypaste their list(which includes summaries of mod statements) here.

• to distinguish Fan Fic (or Fan Works, if you will) from other media, with the distinction that a fan work exists in relationship with an existing work that was not written by the same person, and is not officially licensed. (2011)
• Fanfiction was made a separate category because people got offended by it being under Literature. Not because it isn't literature, but because it has a disproportionately large amount of hatred and bias. As recently as a year ago, I have seen people calling for all fanfiction works pages and examples to be purged from the site because of this hatred. Thus, the separation of fanfiction is a political/PR move: people who like to catalogue fanfiction can, and people who hate it with a fiery passion can pretend it doesn't exist. It has nothing to do with an "official TV Tropes definition" of literature and everything to do with appeasement. (2011)
• Well, our definition of fan fiction is precise: it's the use of characters or settings from copyrighted works without having the permission to do so. The commercial publication of such work would thus be considered a violation of copyright. (2019)

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Amonimus: I am fine with that writeup if we need a crowner for it. I don't think we will be able to settle the other issues with how we classify fan works but deciding what folders The Abridged Series should go in sounds relatively easy to resolve to me.

Edited by MacronNotes on May 20th 2022 at 6:38:14 AM

Macron's notes

But they keep it separate because fanworks are irrelevant when discussing canon, not because they don't like fanworks.

So, yeah, definitely a decade-old "fanfic ghetto" that might not speak to our current beliefs as a wiki.

Edited by WarJay77 on May 20th 2022 at 6:35:10 AM

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

That isn't always the case, I know some people hate when this example is brought up but the Villains Wiki is one of the largest wikis on FANDOM and has a lot of users and it has Fan made villains separated even though it is only a wiki for the broad categorization for villains. I will repeat I am not saying that we should do it just because the villains wiki does I am only bringing this up to show that people as a whole do prefer separating official from fan-made.

I really don't see how the beliefs would change though we have a lot of the same users.

Edited by Ordeaux26 on May 20th 2022 at 3:37:04 AM

CM Sandboxes, MB Sandboxes

As someone who reads and writes fanfic, and who has made a trope page for my fanfic, I honestly am fine with the separation. For me at least, I prefer being able to tell when something is a fandom-based derivative work immediately by example sorting and namespace

That's not people as a whole, that's Villains Wiki

Edited by Libraryseraph on May 20th 2022 at 6:38:12 AM

Absolute destiny... apeachalypse?

The villains wiki is a very large community, I am sure I could find other examples but that is just the first that came to mind since I am a mod on it.

CM Sandboxes, MB Sandboxes

And do you know how Villain's Wiki started? People from TVT got pissy over the CM rules and decided to Start My Own. So it's really just the same anti-fanfic crowd migrating to a new space.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I'm not sure if Villains Wiki is specifically anti-fanfic, but I am reluctant to accept them as a basis when they exist because people got annoyed about our rules and flounced

Absolute destiny... apeachalypse?

Anti-fanfic might be too strong a word, but basically the same people who'd argue for separation on TVT likely migrated over there with the same beliefs. So I'm not inclined to use it as evidence, since if anything our rule came first.

There's still some remnants of it in modern CM thread culture, what with the whole controversy on fanfic villains and the previous "must be similar to canon" rule to count.

Edited by WarJay77 on May 20th 2022 at 6:45:30 AM

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

The wiki has existed since 2006 so no that is not what happened. It may be true that some people came over for the reason but that is not why the wiki was created.

Edited by Ordeaux26 on May 20th 2022 at 3:48:30 AM

CM Sandboxes, MB Sandboxes

Well, that's the story I was told, and there's still a lot of TVT users who migrated over there in protest even if they weren't the ones who invented it.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness