Updates From the World of Journalism + a Clarification

[bookshop]

Hi, LJ / DW!

I am so very remiss in letting you guys know where I've been and what I've been writing, but I do have a couple of quick updates for you:

AfterElton has asked me to be one of their 5 new "slash experts" for their brand-new column on slash fandom, The Shipping News! I'm so excited, omg! And I have to thank the Daily Dot for letting

Comments

[podklb]

Paraka's original version of the entry links the fanfic as "based on" in the right sidebar, without identifying it as a fic.

I legitimately do not understand how include is accurate. I am not trying to be difficult, and it's not really a big deal and it's in the past and all, but. It's true that the sidebar did not say "based on the fanfic called" but rather "based on," but it seems self-evident that the thing linked to is a fic, if one knows what podfic means. What else would it be based on?

Since there was no inclusion of the fanfiction in the general text of the entry beforehand

Right, but why is the general text of the entry the only thing that's being considered, and not the sidebar?

And I don't think just changing it to "emphasize" is really fully accurate to the situation either-it's just so much more complex what was done to the entry. I mean, it basically was about whether a podfic gets to own its identity or not. It's about names. If I say "This Never Happened" and I'm talking about my podfic, is that automatically going to be assumed to be an error that needs correcting, because This Never Happened is clearly the *fic* at heart and the podfic is just borrowing that name? If that's so, does the podfic get a name of its own? Changing "TNH is a podfic" to "TNH is a fic for which a podfic was created" is just... it delves into a lot of weird stuff about names and ownership and interdependence and hierarchy and it's not simple, and I don't think the implications of that change could be properly conveyed by any quick one-sentence summary. The real issue is much less sexy, but it was basically "What do we call our work that it will feel to readers like we are naming the podfic and not naming the fic that it uses as a script?" That's it. It didn't provoke outrage, just frustration and then problem-solving about how we could address the name issue, especially since Fanlore's rules precluded our most obvious first try of just naming the entry "This Never Happened (podfic)."

But here's the reason it's a problem to say that Paraka took issue with the entry being changed to include the fic. The reason is that THAT WASN'T WHAT SHE TOOK ISSUE WITH. Yes, you could characterize what happened as the entry being changed to include the fic, though I think that's a weird characterization for the reasons I stated above. But even if we go with that premise, it doesn't make the sentence accurate, because that's not the source of her problem at all. If the entry had been edited to say "TNH is a podfic by klb, based on the fic TNH by bexless," that wouldn't have been an issue. Even if it had been changed to *emphasize* the fic, saying TNH is a podfic by klb, based on the fic TNH by bexless" and then included a long section about the history and importance of the fic and reviews and stuff (without removing the podfic content), she (and I) might have been a little disappointed at seeing the podfic get overshadowed in what had initially been its own entry, but I highly doubt it would have been an issue. At most she might have made a disambiguation page and moved over some of the podfic info there, so it would be easier to find for people searching specifically for the podfic-but even that much she might not have done.

And Paraka is well-known in podfic fandom, so when you say that she felt a certain way it makes it sound like the general stance of podfic fandom is to feel that way. And the way you said she feels is a mischaracterization, and it mischaracterizes all of us, in a way. And it's not like a ton of people are talking about the article, and I am really not all that bent out of shape about it. Except you keep repeating that it's accurate, and I just sincerely do not believe that it is.

"Paraka took issue when another fan on Fanlore attempted to edit an entry she had made on a podfic to include the fanfiction that it was based on, combining both the podfic and the original story under the same URL." That's just... not what happened. Unless you really mean those things to be not connected, like a fan did this and also she took issue, though what she took issue with was not that the fan did this. But if that's what you mean, it seems like a pretty misleading way to phrase it.

[eleveninches]

Sorry, I'm not trying to be rude, but I've read this comment about 5 times and it literally makes no sense to me. On the Talk page on Fanlore, Paraka does take issue with the changes re: putting the fic and podfic on the same page:

I really disagree with the changes to this page Agentstarbucks made. This is an entry about a *podfic* and the slight changes made, make this into an entry about a *fic*, never mind that the rest of the entry is about the podfic and the podficcer. No offence to Agentstarbucks, whom I'm sure was just trying to clarify, but this is also my main objection to removing the (podfic) disambiguation from the page title; people confuse this entry as being about the fic. While podfic and the fic it's based on are, of course, related, they're still *separate* fanworks that should have separate entries on fanlore. --paraka

Reading the Talk page, that was the only time Paraka commented, and then someone else (MeeDee) came in and was like, Oh, what she's actually upset about is podfics should have their own page. But Paraka was objecting to the entry on the podfic being changed... so... I don't get your comment at all.

[podklb]

It's not rude! It's a kind of complicated thing to explain.

Okay, let me see...

When she said "I really disagree with the changes to this page Agentstarbucks made" the thing she disagreed with was NOT (as Aja's article claimed) that the fic was now being included or emphasized.

When she said "This is an entry about a *podfic* and the slight changes made make this into an entry about a *fic*" she meant that the change actually took the name of the podfic and said, essentially, "This Never Happened is not a podfic, it is a fic." But This Never Happened is also a podfic, and the podfic by that name was what the page was about. So by making that change, the editor said the entry was about something that it was not about, just because the editor seemed to not feel comfortable with the name of the podfic being used to refer to the podfic (as its own entity) and not to the fic.

When she said "this is also my main objection to removing the (podfic) disambiguation from the page title; people confuse this entry as being about the fic" that's because she initially had named the pages stuff like "This Never Happened (podfic)" so that this issue of the two fanworks uneasily sharing the same name would not come up. But the rules of Fanlore meant that the word (podfic) had to be removed from the entry title, meaning the entry title for the podfic was identical to if it had been an entry for this fic, which is what led to the tension about what the always-shared name of a fic/podfic is allowed to refer to when used on its own, which is what led to the editor making the (well-intentioned, I'm sure) change.

When she said "While podfic and the fic it's based on are, of course, related, they're still *separate* fanworks that should have separate entries on fanlore" she was talking about the fact that it's not okay to take an entry named "This Never Happened" that is about the podfic with that name and change the first sentence to say that "This Never Happened" is a fic (which, though true, has little to do with the fact that the fanwork on this page is This Never Happened the podfic), and she was also expressing her personal opinion that the podfic should be able to have its own page separate from a potential page for the fic, if there is enough info about the podfic and about the fic to merit this. <---The latter is actually closer to my own opinion on the issue than necessarily what she meant-you'd have to ask her exactly what she meant by that, but regardless of what it was, she has already stated multiple times that her issue was not with fic info being added to the entry but rather to the "is podfic allowed to own its own name in a situation like this or will people think it is somehow only an add-on to the fic, which is the only thing that can really owns the name, and if it's the latter, how should we refer to the podfic if not by name and if we can't add the disambiguation "(podfic)" to the end of the name.

I truly don't think you're being rude by not understanding what I'm saying-I'm frustrated myself by how I seem to keep needing to talk in circles around it and somehow can't concisely pinpoint the issue in a way that is accessible to people who haven't been taking part in the conversation the whole way through-and I'm happy to continue to explain if you are still interested and still scratching your head at what on Earth I mean. Maybe if I keep trying I'll finally find a way to get at it! Or maybe you or someone else will be able to rephrase it for me in a way that's simple and direct but still feels accurate...

[aphelant]

IDK if this will help at all, but I think a more accurate paraphrase would have been:

"Paraka took issue when another fan on Fanlore edited an entry she had made on a podfic to emphasize the fic instead, only noting that a podfic had also been created."

[podklb]

Or maybe, like, "Edited the entry to say it was about a fic, only noting afterwards that a podfic had also been created, although all of the rest of the content of the entry was clearly about the podfic."

[eleveninches]

That does help clarify the above comment, but doesn't Aja's paraphrase include this? I just looked, and she wrote:

Paraka took issue when another fan on Fanlore attempted to edit an entry she had made on a podfic to include the fanfiction that it was based on, combining both the podfic and the original story under the same URL. The discussion on the wiki talk page centered around naming conventions on the wiki, and how best to disambiguate between a fic and a podfic of the same story.

That to me is the same thing as what you said, just without the specifics of what had been changed on the wiki page. I mean, sure, it's vague, but it's not wrong.

I have no stake in this, I'm just confused by the reactions I saw from people on Twitter.

[podklb]

Well, the second sentence is fully accurate, but the first sentence isn't. I don't know how to say it other than repeating that if the entry had been edited to include the fanfic, or to include content about the fanfic, that would be a completely different scenario than an edit that basically assumed that calling This Never Happened a podfic at all must be a mistake, and was changed solely to alter the description of what This Never Happened was to a fanfic (of which a podfic had been made). The problem wasn't the inclusion of the fanfic, it was the exclusion of the podfic as a possible fanwork with that title.

ETA: The thing that makes it complicated is you can't say the entry was edited to exclude the podfic, because it still kept the podfic's commentary and reviews in and still mentioned that a podfic had been made. The only thing that was stripped was the podfic's right to its own name.

[aphelant]

"The problem wasn't the inclusion of the fanfic, it was the exclusion of the podfic as a possible fanwork with that title."

This. The way the entry was changed was thoughtless and didn't add any content, just took away the podfic's right to have its own Fanlore entry.

[aphelant]

I'm not very eloquent, but I will give this a go.

The way Aja's paraphrase sounds to me is that Paraka was miffed at having the fic added to the podfic entry. Actually, Paraka was miffed that the entry was changed to emphasize the fic without actually adding any content about it.

Basically, the podfic was sidelined in its own entry, and in a way that came across as invalidating podfic as a fanwork on its own (since all fanworks are able to have their own pages and there is no notability requirement on Fanlore, so why is someone changing an entry about a podfic to emphasize the fic instead?). This is what generated the discussions about Fanlore policies and what can we do to prevent this mistake (which it was! it was not malicious.) from happening again etc and so on. If the addition of the fic to the entry had generated actual content in the entry as well, that would have been very very different.

[anatsuno]

Okay, here goes. Basically the Fanlore rule is, if two works have the same name, the first page created about one of the works gets the name as a title (& URL), without any indication that could allow people to know which of the two works it is. So we can't make a page for podfic X and call it X (podfic), it has to be called X.

Imagine instead of podfic that we're talking about a play and famous performances and adaptations of that play. The Fanlore rule means that if I'm making an entry about Much Ado About Nothing, the Branagh movie, I can't indicate in the title that it's the movie I'm talking about. Right? So some people are going to click on that link, or find that page, and possibly think that they've found the page about the Shakespeare play. Normally, a quick read of the page itself and the infobox on the side with the metadata should clear that right up - hopefully.

In our case here, it's like the original page had said

"Much Ado About Nothing is a movie directed by Kenneth Branagh" and in the infobox on the side said "adapted from Much Ado About Nothing, a play by Shakespeare." Then the page goes on to talk about what Branagh and his cast did that was interesting, and glosses over the importance of the original play because that's not what the page is about - it's int he categories Movies and Movie Adaptations, not in the Theatre category.

The idea is that if someone wants to make en entry about the play, they are free to do so, and then because there WILL be two works on the wiki with the same name, a disambiguation page will be created.

Now, someone comes along, and instead of grokking that this entry is about the movie, they see it as a mistake, and they edit the entry. They don't add content about the play, they don't look at the infobox or understand Fanlore's rules, the *only* change they make is to say

"Much Ado About Nothing is a play by Shakespeare, of which Branagh made a movie adaptation."

The only thing this does - the only thing - is stripping the movie of a legitimate right to its title. What this sentence does is convey "the play has this title, that's its name, and other things that were made from it after also exist which might bear the same name."

And historically that's of course completely true? The issue is not and was never about whether that sentence was true or false, but about its context. An entry devoted to a certain type of work, using a certain type of infobox and template, categorized in a certain way on the wiki, has just been muddled by a sentence that deligitimizes and miscategorizes it. Not because someone thought that one entry for both works would be good, and made a proper dual entry where each work would have its paragraph, for example, and categorized it accordingly - purely because (it seems) they thought that saying "Much Ado About Nothing is a movie by Kenneth Branagh" was not good enough, somehow untrue or illegitimate.

It's like if a mother and a daughter had the exact same name and both got famous for different things, and I created an entry for the daughter where no entry for the mother exists, and then someone came along and without adding anything of interest anywhere changed the first sentence to "Charlotte SoandSo was a scientist; she had a daughter also called Charlotte SoandSo.", all the while leaving the contents of the entry, which apply to the daughter only, intact, and with the page still using the template for artists (because the daughter was not famous for sciencing) and belonging to the Artist category.

And I've officially spent way too much time typing this! back to laundry for me. I hope it clarifies things, and if not, oh well.

[eleveninches]

Right, I get why you guys are upset with Fanlore.

It's like if a mother and a daughter had the exact same name and both got famous for different things, and I created an entry for the daughter where no entry for the mother exists

So someone included the mother in the daughter's entry, which is exactly what Aja's article said, without all the details. She wrote: The discussion on the wiki talk page centered around naming conventions on the wiki, and how best to disambiguate between a fic and a podfic of the same story.

[anatsuno]

Right, but the inclusion is not what Paraka (or the rest of us) objected to, and that's what the text of the article conveys.*

The inclusion could have been done in many other ways that *did not* strip the podfic of its right to the same title, and the rights-stripping is what triggered the discussion. The nature-changing of the page is the problem, not the inclusion of the fic.

I never said and haven't even seen anyone say that Aja took her facts from the anon meme or anything like that - never thought she did, either - but she wrote something (that sentence) that conveys an inaccurate/incomplete fact in a way that is *key* to representing the actual issue. In my opinion. The part you quoted is entirely correct, obviously, it's accurate reporting - at no point did I mean or say that the whole article is a lie or anything like that. Just that key part, because, well, it's key.

* A friend of a friend who knows nothing about this whole kerfuffle read the article**, and what he took away from it (in part) was "arrogant podficcers refuse to see credit given to the authors of the stories they record". He's an actor, and he's the one who brought up Shakespeare, saying 'it's like I put up a play by Shakespeare and refused to put his name on the program' - which, no, it's nothing like that and never was. I completely allow that people (in that case, him) extrapolate things in their own minds, obviously! but I still feel it's kind of telling that someone who read the article could come away with this impression.

** I know, I know, lurkers supporting me in email, blech. oh well.

[eleveninches]

I think we have to agree to disagree here!

[paraka]

There are a couple reasons we don't agree with the wording of that first sentence.

It doesn't reflect my actual issues with the situation (and true, I didn't leave any further comments on the Talk Page, but that's because the conversation had been moved to the Fanlore Dreamwidth comm) or my actual actions (since *I* had included info on the fic when I first created the entry).

It also leaves the impression that podficcers want to cut authors out of the equation, like we want to pretend our creations were made completely on their own without input from others. And it's that implication that started the FFA thread and here Aja is, confirming it. It was never an implication I, or the other podficcers involved with this discussion, intended to give and it was certainly never our motivation.