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This user was a top ten contributor on Fan History during a thirty day period. For this Fan History thanks the user!

For the month of December 2007.

This user was a top ten contributor on Fan History during a one week period. For this Fan History thanks the user!

Just wanted to thank you for all your helpful contributions. :) Fan History Wiki is much better for it. --Partly_Bouncy 22:56, 19 January 2007 (CST)

Aw, thanks! I'm glad to help! -Jae

And another things for dealing with the chinese spammer. Ug. :/ --Partly_Bouncy 11:00, 16 August 2007 (CDT)

And more random yeah! If you are ever in Chicago (or you're located near London, Oslo or Vilnius), let me know and I'll treat you to dinner to thank you for your contributions. :) --Partly_Bouncy 10:31, 5 September 2007 (CDT)

Excellent! I'd really like that - It'd be great to meet you! I'm moving to NYC in October, so if you ever make it to the Big Apple, dinner's on me! -Jae 10:13, 18 September 2007 (CDT)

As a heads up, I just disabled the ability for anon users to edit. --Laura 07:55, 27 September 2007 (CDT)

And then I disabled and installed this plugin instead. If you have problems with it, let me know. --Laura 08:15, 27 September 2007 (CDT)

Contents 1 The Death Gate Cycle Timeline Formatting 2 Anime categories 3 X-Men 4 Deletion policy 5 Fanthropology 6 Fan History: Bias revisited 7 E-mail 8 AIM 9 BNF question 10 Harry Potter! :) 11 AIM 12 Skins... 13 E-mail request 14 encyclopediadramatica

[edit] The Death Gate Cycle Timeline Formatting

Jae: I didn't use that format on the DGC timeline because there's not much of note in the DGC fandom, so most of those years will probably only have single listings. I think it looks a bit strange (and lonely!) that way, but I suppose the lonely years may inspire people to dig up something, anything that happened in them? Is it just a standard format to adhere to in this Wiki? Whatever the reason, thanks for having a look at the article! -- Immora 13:20, 8 October 2007 (CDT)

Ack, sorry! Wasn't my intention to step on your toes! It just seemed to me that including years as sub-headings was the norm, so I just stuck them in. Feel free to remove them if you think the timeline looks better without them. The Death Gate Cycle is one of my favorite fantasy series, so it makes me really happy to see such a good article about them.  :) -Jae 09:31, 9 October 2007 (CDT)

It's all right! Just letting you know why I hadn't followed the normal format. I'll see how the headings go, and if they don't work quite right, I'll go to something like 1990s and 2000s as headings. Annnd.... *SQUEAL!* DGC is my #1 favorite, so I'm always WAY TOO EXCITED when I find out somebody else likes them! :D -- Immora 13:29, 9 October 2007 (CDT)

Ok, groovy! Organizing by decades sound good. Also - Hell YES to the DGC being righteously awesome! They're definitely some of the best fantasy novels I've ever read. I bought the first one on a whim, and as soon as I finished it, I rushed out to get the rest of the series. Always good to meet another fan! -Jae 14:53, 9 October 2007 (CDT)

Woooo! \../, I keep trying to get more people to read them, maybe lured in four people or so. It's surprising to me that so many people actually have read them and yet the fandom is tiiiiny. I first read them in sixth grade (after playing the game in fifth) because my dad had read them and let me borrow his copies. Maybe over a decade after their release, the fandom can finally grow some more. -- Immora 20:40, 9 October 2007 (CDT)

Yep - I read them in middle school, too! Didn't have the internet then, so I had no idea that a fandom existed (or even what a fandom was!). I actually just read your essay about queer themes in the books - really interesting, btw! - and I completely missed that the last time I read the series (which was years ago, I admit), so I'm looking forward to re-reading them and getting involved with the fandom this time around. -Jae 09:35, 10 October 2007 (CDT)

Yeah, I didn't get net access until a little while after, and then I could only find Sailor Moon stuff. The only Death Gate page around then was Dee's, as far as I remember. Glad you found the essay interesting! It wasn't a particular thing I picked up on in reading, just a vague thing in the back of my head, but an essay assignment got me to sit down and put the thoughts together. Recently got a semi-flamey e-mail about those essays, too! Anyway, do re-read them! I've read them seven times now ;) I believe I linked the DG livejournal community on the article, but if not, it's linked on my site. -- Immora 16:54, 10 October 2007 (CDT)

If it hasn't been mentioned on the community, I can do a drive by and ask for help with the article. :) Just give me the url. :) --Laura 01:15, 11 October 2007 (CDT)

• snort* XD You and your crazy pimpin'! Nah, I posted something about it just four days ago, so shouldn't be a need. You can look anyway, though! Livejournal comm and one of the authors' forums -- Immora 13:02, 11 October 2007 (CDT)

I cannot help myself. :) I want more people involved and I want the wiki to grow and improve and be more helpful. :) Did not see the traffic from them so huh. :/ I really wish I could figure out a way to get the Due South fans to edit their page. That would be a nice monkey off my back. --Laura 15:23, 11 October 2007 (CDT)

[edit] Anime categories

Wanted to comment to let you know that I'm taking a whack at the Anime categories and fandom pages to make that category a bit more unnavigable. When I get the time, I'll probably see about doing other categories similarly as it seems logical. :) I just need to remember to come back and hit all the fandom specific pages, not just the subcats. It is also clearing things out of the whole Category:Fandoms at the same time which is yeah! All good! --Laura 02:22, 26 October 2007 (CDT)

[edit] X-Men

Can you take a look at this and Talk:X-men and let me know your opinion? Should those changes be rolled back or are they appropiate? --Laura 11:07, 2 January 2008 (CST)

[edit] Deletion policy

Deletion_requests has been updated. If you have any problems with the page, either edit it to fix them or let me know. I'm feeling rather flexible with whatever policy but I like the ability to be able to respond to requests faster, rather than waiting for a VfD which seems like it could drag out and lead to wank, where as a simple deletion request is much simpler to go boom! and gone. --Laura 15:58, 3 January 2008 (CST)

[edit] Fanthropology

Wanted to alert you to http://community.livejournal.com/fanthropology/407419.html and ask your opinion/views. (Can be off wiki. Just asking it on and explaining myself for the sake of openness and searchability.)

In terms of Thamiris, several things: 1. The links to her obit were posted in a number of places on LiveJournal and JournalFen when people learned of her death. 2. The links did not include information regarding that said that she desired separation from her real life and fannish life. If I had known that, it is highly unlikely I would have included that information. 3. When the link to the Fan History article appeared and people realized it was there, being a wiki, her friends could have easily edited it out. 4. It was not done with any malice on my part. It did not remain with any malice. The link won't be put back. If some one feels vicious and puts it back, it will be edited out again.

In terms of Naomi Novik's name and fan name being linked, the feelings I had that were talked over with others were:

• The organizers of the Organization for Transformative Works are representing fandom. They are associating their real names with their fannish activities and are trying to bring legitimacy in the main stream to fandom. Through their actions, they erased the separation between the two identities.
• The original proposal for Organization for Transformative Works was done on Astolat's LiveJournal. In telling the history of the organization, there becomes a bit of a gap and confusion when Astolat the fan became Naomi Novik the writer. The organization themselves offered no history on how these two things connected and why the original person who put forth the idea was no longer involved with the project.
• Noami's fan and pen name are pretty much open secrets in fandom, secrets that get mentioned in numerous memes. The divide between the two was already breached before the article on Fan History.

And that's what I wanted to say. :/ If you have any thoughts on that, disagree with any of those points or have suggestions to avoid similar problems and accusations in the future, let me know. --Laura 11:02, 5 January 2008 (CST)

I don't really have much knowledge or experience with OTW, so I don't have any strong feelings one way or another, but your logic is sound. As far as the Thamiris business is concerned, someone commented in the thread at JournalFen that she had wanted to keep her fandom life and real life separated, so respecting that wish postmortem is probably for the best, even if it means excluding sources and even though the beans have already been spilled. Like Sidewinder said in the comments of the Fanthopology post, we don't really have control over our privacy on the Internet, and anyone curious enough can probably pull up every one of our "secrets" on Google. I dunno. I find it hard to believe that a spouse or friend or parent would disown a fan because s/he writes slash or whatever, but what do I know. I've never felt ashamed about writing fanfiction, and it's hard for me to wrap my brain around that fact that other people feel that way. But yeah, in conclusion, I totally agree with your points. -Jae 12:59, 5 January 2008 (CST)

The OTW thing is something I'm trying to avoid but failing miserably at because I find the whole thing way past fascinating, even where I disagree with them. Chatted a lot with a friend about it. She sees us both calling the other wrong... and when you scratch at it, it clearly becomes a point where we can't communicate effectively as we're approaching it from different perspectives. Hence, Fanhistory.com:Philosophy was expanded to clarify what these differences are and why the wiki is organized the way it is. And I'm digressing.

The shame thing is one that kind of bothers me. For all that fandom is, I'm no longer ashamed of it. I might not like parts of it. I might loathe parts but none of my fanac shames me. Because I was in education for a long time, I learned that I had to own fandom, to define it on my own terms to those I worked with so that I wouldn't have to worry about outsiders educating people I worked with in a way that caused me shame. For things like slash and chan, I can understand why people would be scared of family disowning them. Seriously can... but at the same time, it is an issue of priorities. What gets you more if the two things are not in harmony? Blah.

The Thamiris thing though, I'm of the mind that I would rather people in AFTER the fact, asking for references to be removed or removing themselves rather than approaching everyone and finding out what sort of exposure that they want in the wiki. If we have to assume that no one wants to be talked about and that everything is private until assumed otherwise, then it becomes impossible to tell fandom history in any meaningful and accurate way because of the amount of censoring that would be going on. --Laura 20:17, 5 January 2008 (CST)

[edit] Fan History: Bias revisited

Hey. Had a conversation last night with some one that pointed out that one of the external criticisms was that it is very easy to view Fan History as a personal monograph that too heavily reflects my own personal bias. For me, this seems like a perfectly valid criticism and has some elements of truthfulness. It isn't helped by my own frequent use of the term my when describing Fan History and with other administrators seemingly going to me for the final word on the changes that they want to do. This issue was then discussed with another person regarding the validity. The following suggestions were made and looking for feedback on them so I can figure out how to behave and to help improve the quality of the histories on Fan History by making it more accessible to others:

On wiki issues 1. Get rid of timelines and other lists. They aren't history. Use paragraph structure as that is a history, as opposed to be being a list of facts. 2. Stop using the templates linked on Help:Contents. Remove all the blank sections. Allow contributions to develop more organically. 3. Remove references to me as the final go to person for decisions made on Fan History on the main page, all about pages and help pages. 4. Remove the philosophy of wiki page. Remove statements regarding bias. Make the about page much flatter and factual, with out any statement regarding purpose, audience, who can edit. Should not need to be stated.

Contributor issues 5. For me to stop personally editing much, stepping back from the wiki for a month or two, allowing the current administrators and others to become more active with out the fear of me sitting on the sidelines, waiting to impose my philosophical mindset on the history being presented. 6. Paying for advertisements on external sites in order to get contributors outside the narrow audience that Fan History currently is receiving. 7. Using an account not tied into my personal accounts to promote wiki inside of fandom that administrators have shared access to. Have other administrators use them and actively promote the wiki as where I've already been doing but removing the personal tie ins that I tend to have. Assign administrators specifically to promote the wiki as part of their role of admins. 8. Approaching people affiliated with other philosophical mindsets for the wiki and offering to pay them to become active contributors on the wiki and do lots of edits in order to give clear voice to alternative perspectives in fandom.

Anyway, thoughts on any and all of the above? What should be implemented? How should it be implemented? If implemented, what would you be willing to do in order to accomplish these tasks? --Laura 08:48, 8 January 2008 (CST)

[edit] E-mail

Can you send me an e-mail or send me a message on AIM/Y!M? I've a question regarding the Wikia thing that I'd like do run past you before anything gets mentioned on Fanhistory.com:Wikia moving discussion that came up in chatting with the live help people in their chat room. Thanks. :) --Laura 13:31, 9 January 2008 (CST)

[edit] AIM

Going to be on AIM later today? If not, I'll just drop you an e-mail. --Laura 10:16, 18 January 2008 (CST)

[edit] BNF question

Hey, if I wanted to find out who the BNFs were vidding, fic and art wise were for Naruto, Bleach, Inuyasha, where would you ask? --Laura 14:58, 25 January 2008 (CST)

[edit] Harry Potter! :)

Yay! Massive thanks for dealing with some of the Harry Potter character name categories.

Completely unrelated, did a massive edit and rewrite and promotion of the Doctor Who article. It isn't perfect because well, yeah. Good start... and hopefully, because the article already has a lot of work done to it, people will help to edit it. Much easier that way. --Laura 11:24, 14 February 2008 (CST)

Hehe, no problem! It might take a while, but I think that including characters' full names makes things clearer and nicer looking. Woot. I noticed the work you put into the Doctor Who stuff. Hot damn, that looks like a huge undertaking. A show that goes back into the 1960s? Totally sweet - and I bet totally complicated regarding fandom. -Jae 11:34, 14 February 2008 (CST)

[edit] AIM

• whines* Will you be around on AIM soon? I keep losing your e-mail address. --Laura 21:36, 17 March 2008 (CDT)

[edit] Skins...

That is one example of one I haven't fulled installed that I sort of like and could probably figure out some modifications for. The problem is that something like that messed up the tables inside a page. :/ --Laura 11:13, 19 March 2008 (CDT)

[edit] E-mail request

Hey, can you drop http://www.extratextual.tv/ an e-mail and ask them to link to Fan History? Thanks. --Laura 07:51, 23 March 2008 (CDT)

Sure, I'll get right on it! -Jae 10:43, 3 April 2008 (EDT)

[edit] encyclopediadramatica

So I created articles about the major players as I sort of understand it in the Rescue Rangers fandom. The issue that came up is the ED article. Is it something that should be cited on those pages?

Good argument: Some of the fandom kerfluffling took place over there. While mocking and highly biased and full of LULZ, there are bits of truth to what is written in the article. Information can be extracted. Better source than no source.

Not so good argument: Article is highly biased, written for LULZ, could lead people to question Fan History's citations, bring more wiki drama.

Thoughts? For this instance and future instances where encyclopediadramatica might come up as a possible source? --Laura 18:31, 17 May 2008 (EDT)