definitions in fandom

[alixtii]

In the second chapter of Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, a young Alice Liddell accuses the Red Queen of speaking nonsense, and is supplied with the response "You may call it `nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary

Comments

[glossing]

this urge to settle matters of usage by democratic vote is indicative of a need to pin down frustrating terms to hard-and-fast meanings we can all agree upon
Interesting take, and thank you for this.

I didn't make the poll on the meaning of UC, but I did read it as an exercise not in more definition but in community classification. You'll notice from the comments on the poll that very few posters were *happy* or even sanguine about the categories, but answered in order to contribute toward building a sense of canonicity.

While classification can be very similar to definition, it isn't the same thing, imo.

[alixtii]

I agree with most of this. I think with most similar polls, those responding (And the person giving the poll!) know personally well that whatever is being polled about is too complicated to really be addressed by the poll, but take the poll anyway because its fun playing with concepts within such artifically-defined paramaters. Its why people make and take quizzes, too, methinks.

What do you think the function of classification is?

[elsewherecw]

Interesting points.

Your 'badfic elements' link points to the empty domain of example.com, by the way.

Oops.

[alixtii]

Oh, so true.

One can find the fixed link here.

[dragonscholar]

This stood out:
As fen, we can't just stop talking because we are paralyzed by the fear that someone will misunderstand us.

I think we're also afraid of not being able to communicate. Fandom often has a lot of unique things going on inside of it, subtle interactions and broad occurances. I think we WANT a language to be able to discuss things and interact in our own personal setting.

Of course thats hard, especially in this age of speed-evolving internet fandom.

I myself take a casual view however. Language is a tool. It's necessary. So we do our best with it and try to figure out how to apply it.

Not that its not fascinating to discuss ;)

[kielle]

Keep in mind that many fen, especially those involved in communicative media like fanfic and journalling, are also bookworms and language geeks. We want to know what words mean, and we need them to have one universal meaning -- you can't write or talk without a common vocabulary. Misunderstanding can be deadly in a non-face-to-face format.

I hate to tangent about myself for a moment, but it's pertinent: I maintain the Glossary, if this gives you any idea how close this subject is to my heart. :) I'm interested not in how ONE fandom "speaks" but rather in rounding up and defining terms which could allow comprehension across fannish lines. My goal is to create a sort of a Rosetta Stone of online media fandom, and (more practical, perhaps) to minimize the time wasted by newbies asking the same questions over and over and getting a dozen varying answers.

But I've always been an ambitious little control-freak grammar nazi, anyway. *G*

[alixtii]

I'm a bookworm and language geek (sorta) too, so I certainly know. But I think the simple fact is that misunderstanding is simply the inevitable result of a text-based communication medium (or really, any language-based communication media, and I'm not sure what a non-language based communication medium would look like