Important privacy news for Facebook users

misc Comments

As privacy is such a frequent, troubling issue in fandom, it is important to note that today, Facebook has begun making status messages, photos and videos visible to the public by default instead of being visible only to a user’s approved friends. The New York Times has a good article on what these changes mean, both now and potentially in the future.

Many fans use Facebook, with varying levels of success or effort in keeping their “fannish lives” and identities separate from the “real lives”. All fans who use the service should now take the time to review their privacy settings there, and decide what they are and aren’t comfortable sharing with the world at large. Unfortunately, many users will no doubt not even realize these changes have happened and/or how to adjust their default settings. I won’t be surprised if there may be more incidents of outing seen in the future using information now public on Facebook that users may not have realized was out there for all to see, or how it could put themselves at risk.

For useful information on protecting your privacy on-line in fandom, see FanHistory’s Privacy help page.

Not a parody? Then not fair use. Precedent is bad news for argument that fan fiction is legal!

legal issues Comments

There have been endless debates in fandom as to the legality of fan fiction.  The general consensus, with some noted exceptions, in the community is that fan fiction is highly derivative and would not be covered under fair use.  Some of the most noted proponents of fair use for fan fiction claim that fan fiction is a form of parody. I’ve generally found this type of rationalization rather ridiculous, as most fanfics are easily perceived to not be parodical in nature. (And you’re never going to convince me that your post episode story is, or that your chan story featuring Harry Potter getting butt sex is a form of parody either.)  We’ve just been rather fortunate in our community that there is no legal precedent in US courts, which say that fan fiction is a copyright violation.  We’ve also been fortunate that copyright holders have largely managed to ignore fan fiction or saw ways that they could fit fan fiction into their business plan.  In the past several years, there have been almost no cease and desist letters and DMCA takedown notices for fan fiction.

But it looks like we have finally come close to having that precedent that everyone should be concerned about. By concerned , I mean they need to be concerned about keeping fan fiction out of the courts if this holds up on appeal.  Why?  This court case shows that we could damned well lose.

There was a court case in the United States.  It involved an unauthorized sequel to a work by J.D. Salinger.  The court wrote the following:

To the extent Defendants contend that 60 Years and the character of Mr. C direct parodic comment or criticism at Catcher or Holden Caulfield, as opposed to Salinger himself, the Court finds such contentions to be post-hoc rationalizations employed through vague generalizations about the alleged naivety of the original, rather than reasonably perceivable parody.

Or as Ashby Jones at the Wall Street Jones said, “did not fit into the fair use exception in copyright law because the book did not constitute a critical parody that “transformed” the original.” This sort of ruling doesn’t help the case for the legality of fan fiction.  The court saw through the same sort of bullshit rationalizations for the legality of of this work that fan fiction writers have made.

Will this change the situation in the fan community at all?  No, it won’t.  What it hopefully will do is quiet those voices who claim that fan fiction is transformative, not derivative.  that rational may end up doing more harm than good.

More sad fandom news…

fandom news Comments

It has been a long, sad week in fandom in terms of deaths of those who created the fabric of the content for which we are fans of.  Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Billy Mays all passed away.  Today, we have news of more losses.  They include Karl Malden, Mollie Sugden (Are You Being Served?) and Harve Presnell (The Pretender). :(

Most popular fandoms on Fan History year to date

fandom news Comments

Half the year has passed so it is time to do an update as to the most popular fandoms on Fan History for January to June 2009. Items on this list list tend to appear for three reasons: 1) Interest in the fandom, 2) Quality content, 3) Good SEO. Because of the latter two, I don’t think that you can draw any conclusion about what is going on in fandom as a result. Hopefully, one day, we’ll be there where you can.

Top Fandoms

  1. Digimon
  2. Naruto
  3. Twilight
  4. Harry Potter
  5. Gundam Wing
  6. Supernatural
  7. The Fast and the Furious
  8. Mortal Instruments
  9. Dragon Ball Z
  10. Prince of Tennis

Top Actor Fandoms

  1. Jorja Fox
  2. Allison Stokke
  3. Russel Crowe
  4. Sara Varone
  5. Megan Fox

Top Anime Fandoms

  1. Digimon
  2. Naruto
  3. Gundam Wing
  4. Dragon Ball Z
  5. Prince of Tennis
  6. Sailor Moon
  7. Bleach
  8. D.Gray-Man
  9. Yu-Gi-Oh
  10. Ouran High School Host Club

Top Book Fandoms

  1. Twilight
  2. Harry Potter
  3. Mortal Instruments
  4. Pride and Prejudice
  5. Outsiders
  6. The Death Gate Cycle
  7. Lord of the Rings
  8. Sherlock Holmes
  9. Gor
  10. Alex Rider

Top Cartoons Fandoms

  1. Avatar: The Last Airbender
  2. Transformers
  3. Kim Possible
  4. X-men
  5. Rescue Rangers
  6. Ben 10
  7. Sonic: The Hedgehog
  8. Hey Arnold!
  9. Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series

Top Comics Fandoms

  1. X-men
  2. Batman
  3. Watchmen

Top Movies Fandoms

  1. The Fast and the Furious
  2. Star Trek
  3. Transformers
  4. Outsiders
  5. X-men
  6. Batman
  7. Star Wars
  8. X-Files
  9. Watchmen
  10. Highlander

Top Music Fandoms

  1. Metallica
  2. Panic! At the Disco
  3. American Idol
  4. Radiohead
  5. Fall Out Boy
  6. Nine Inch Nails
  7. My Chemical Romance
  8. X-Japan
  9. The Beatles
  10. Savage Garden

Top Television Fandoms

  1. Supernatural
  2. Roswell
  3. Merlin
  4. Jon and Kate Plus 8
  5. Star Trek
  6. Gilmore Girls
  7. Beauty and the Beast
  8. Batman
  9. CSI
  10. Doctor Who

Top Video Games Fandoms

  1. Pokemon
  2. Final Fantasy VII
  3. Silent Hill
  4. Final Fantasy
  5. Sonic: The Hedgehog
  6. Zelda
  7. Kingdom Hearts

June 2009 top articles

Fan History admin Comments

June ended. It is time to review the site in terms of what was popular for the month and where our traffic came from.

Most Popular Articles
33,144 pages were viewed a total of 185,876 times

  1. Draco/Hermione – 3,766 visits
  2. Cassandra Claire – 1,699 visits : Back near the top after having been knocked off last month
  3. Race Fail 2009 – 1,415 visits
  4. Sakura Lemon Fan-Fiction Archive – 1,412 visits
  5. AdultFanFiction.Net – 1,377 visits
  6. Naruto – 1,026 visits
  7. FanFiction.Net – 961 visits
  8. Digimon – 953 visits
  9. Russet Noon – 898 visits
  10. Update: Permabanned users policy change – 839 visits : blog entry. Featured on fandom_wank because of comment by LadySybilla

Most Popular Searches Leading to Fan History

  1. galbadia hotel
  2. adultfanfiction
  3. naruto wiki
  4. adult fanfiction
  5. restricted section
  6. gosselins without pity
  7. emo porn
  8. cassandra claire
  9. draco hermione
  10. greatestjournal

Most Popular Referrers to Fan History
Referring sites sent 10,761 visits via 965 sources

  1. journalfen.net – 1,289 visits
  2. AnimeNewsNetwork – 1,163 visits
  3. chickipedia – 820 visits: Midway through the month, the site moved to MadeMen.Com and it looks like their traffic dropped off
  4. community.livejournal.com – 661 visits
  5. fanfiction.net – 335 visits
  6. twitter.com – 306 visits
  7. fanpop – 297 visits
  8. tvtropes.org – 255 visits
  9. deviantart.com – 185 visits
  10. mademan.com – 173 visits

Most Popular Internal Searches
There were 3,832 unique searches via 3,619 search terms

  1. sasuke – 8 searches
  2. keva – 7 searches
  3. astolat – 6 searches
  4. maderr – 6 searches
  5. racefail – 6 searches
  6. st astryr of the uncool – 5 searches
  7. Likos64 – 4 searches
  8. aggybird – 4 searches
  9. angstgoddess003 – 4 searches
  10. asylum 2009 – 4 searches

Most Popular Fandoms

  1. Naruto
  2. Digimon
  3. Twilight
  4. Supernatural
  5. Harry Potter
  6. Transformers
  7. Mortal Instruments
  8. Prince of Tennis
  9. Jon and Kate Plus 8
  10. Gundam Wing

Most Popular Fans

  1. Cassandra Claire
  2. LadySybilla
  3. Maya
  4. Laura
  5. Msscribe
  6. Peter Chimaera
  7. Maygra
  8. Bhaalspawn
  9. Charlie Prince
  10. Ithilien22

Most Popular Ships

  1. Draco/Hermione
  2. Sesshoumaru/Kagome
  3. Harry/Draco
  4. Harry/Hermione
  5. Michael/Maria
  6. Draco/Ginny
  7. Harry/Ginny
  8. Spock/Uhura – Movie and kerfluffle related bump
  9. Janeway/Chakotay
  10. Bumblebee/Sam

Most Popular Kerfluffles

  1. Cassandra Claire
  2. Race Fail 2009
  3. Russet Noon
  4. Update: Permabanned users policy change – blog entry. Featured on fandom_wank because of comment by LadySybilla
  5. First there was Torchsong Chicago. Now there is TwiCon… – blog entry.  Linked on fandom_wank in the comments.
  6. Mortal Instruments
  7. Race Fail 2009 by Author
  8. LadySybilla
  9. Cassandra Claire’s Plagiarism
  10. J&N: A Love Story

Most Popular Fan Fiction Archives

  1. Sakura Lemon Fan-Fiction Archive
  2. AdultFanFiction.Net
  3. FanFiction.Net
  4. FanFiction.net : capitalization difference would make it number one
  5. RestrictedSection
  6. FanWorks.Org
  7. GreatestJournal
  8. FanLib
  9. FanDomination.Net
  10. God Awful Fan Fiction

Michael Jackson fanfiction: is it out there?

misc Comments

I’ve noticed that since the shocking death of Michael Jackson last week, one of the top phrases showing up in our keywords for searches is Michael Jackson fanfiction. I admit I, too, was curious to find out if the Michael Jackson fan community had any kind of fan fiction activity to date, so I did a little searching around. The answer seems to be, not much–either that or it is well-hidden and only accessible to people deep within the fandom.

MJ Fanfiction is one site I found, but it only had 6 stories, mostly of the NC-17 variety with OFCs. MJJ Dream World is a bulletin board community which has a fan fiction section, which is locked to members of the board (and one must show posting activity on other areas of the site before gaining access). From looking at the feedback thread, which is open, it does seem as though this site has some considerable fan-fiction activity, again of mostly the OFC/potentially Mary Sue variety. MJSite.com has a “fan fiction” section which looked more promising volume-wise, but investigation reveals many of the postings there are not fanfic so much as personal stories and statements of support and love towards Michael. There are a few actual pieces of fiction in there, but one must go digging for them. One other forum, Make That Change, has a section for fan-fiction but the only activity seems to be on the poetry sub-forum.

What about Yahoogroups? Well, I found three groups that came up on a “Michael Jackson fan fiction” search, one of which only had 11 postings ever (all spam); one was a locked community for one author’s Michael Jackson/Prince story, Pale Perfection; the last, Novel Fever, showed some small amount of activity but was again locked to members-only.

LiveJournal? Plenty of MJ fan communities, but none that mentioned fanfic in the description.

That’s all I’ve been able to find so far. If there are other, better archives or sites for Michael Jackson fanfiction, I’d be curious to hear about them. And I also wonder if we’ll begin to see more of it now in the future, as his name is back in the spotlight, even if under such unfortunate circumstances. Will people feel freer to write fiction now, or more disturbed by the concept? I’m not sure. Real person/celebrity fiction is always an interesting thing to me to study, and this could be a particularly intriguing case depending on what the future of Michael’s legend holds in store for fandom.

Anime-Fanfiction.net

fandom news Comments

Posting this for people who are interested in Anime fan fiction…  It is a copy and paste of a message by taiyoukai_nile that she wanted passed along.

As mentioned not long ago, [info]x_keva_x and I were going to open an anime fanfiction site. The site is officially open. Right now Rita (Pitabread) and I will be in the works for Avatar Fanfiction as an offshoot. Although I would put it on the site, there was enough questions and interest for it.

Any anime not listed, you can list in Other. When we have more than a dozen fanfics that goes toward a category, then we will make one.

Anyway, without further ado please feel free to be a part of Anime-Fanfiction.net!

We are looking for affiliate anime based sites to link with as well. Please pass the word!!!

Using Twilight to promote another fandom?

fans, marketing Comments

This morning I received an interesting email from one of the fan groups for Fiction Plane, an alt/rock-group which has been around for a number of years of which I am a moderate follower. Fiction Plane opened for The Police on the first half of their world tour in 2007-2008, perhaps not unsurprising given one of the members of the group, Joe Sumner, is Sting’s son. While that tour did manage to boost their visibility to the public, it didn’t really do much to get them on the charts or bring them widespread success, at least here in the U.S. where they maintain a loyal, but not especially large following.

Well, some fans are trying to think of creative ways to promote them, especially with a new album due out later this year. And what they’re proposing is a campaign to get a Fiction Plane song on the soundtrack for the next Twilight movie, “New Moon”. They’ve created a Facebook page for the campaign as well as having a thread about it on one of the main fan sites.

Undoubtably, the widespread phenomenon that is Twilight brought a big boost to the popularity of the bands featured on the soundtrack of the first movie. When I looked at statistics for the Twilight last.fm group earlier this year, many of the most popular artists within that fan community were those featured on the soundtrack album. That said, are the demographics for Twilight compatible really with Fiction Plane fans? I’m not sure. My experience is that FP fans tend to skew older. They’re not so much a band that appeals greatly to the teen, tween, and young adult crowd the way Twilight does. I don’t know that I would hear their music being really compatible on a soundtrack with, say Paramore. But, I could be seriously mistaken on that, so who knows.

I think, more importantly, Fiction Plane fans need to come up with a serious plan if they want to make this happen. An on-line Facebook group isn’t going to do the trick, and as the film is due this November I would have to imagine much of the negotiation for soundtrack music may already be long completed (perhaps they’d be better aiming for “Eclipse”?) Petition drives can be effective but only when well organized and focused on the proper individuals — and truly huge in volume. Big enough to get media coverage. The cynical part of me is far too convinced that getting on the soundtrack for a sure-to-be blockbuster like “New Moon” is something that takes a good deal of record company and corporate dealings and is driven by demographic studies far more than fan-driven efforts. That said, I wish them well — I just hope these fans don’t get too disappointed if they find that a grass roots campaign like this is up against huge entertainment industry hurdles.

Three pieces of fandom news

fandom news Comments

Today seems like a really news heavy day for fandom with all sorts of things with some legal implications.  If you haven’t heard of these stories, you should check out the related Fan History articles or read the sources.

  • China bans gold farming. (source)
  • Harry Potter fans have credit cards stolen after trying to illegally download newest movie. (source)
  • In June 2009, Darryn Walker, 35, from South Tyneside, was cleared of obscenity charges related to a story he published online that the featured kidnap and murder of Girls Aloud. (source)
  • Archive of Our Own vs. FanLib: Why they are not succeeding

    misc Comments

    I love statistics.  I love analytics.  I love analyzing fandom based on those numbers.  The numbers can provide a framework for telling a story.  In the case of this set of numbers, a group was created back in May 2007 to try to bring greater fan control over certain parts of fandom in response to what they saw as the commercialism of fandom.  The specific commercialism of fandom in this case was FanLib.  There were people who hoped and believed that their new archive could end up being bigger than FanFiction.Net.   It hasn’t materialized and compared to what this group was fighting, they didn’t even measure up to FanLib in terms of the number of stories that FanLib had before it closed.  (Comparing their archive to FanLib seems apt.  Their supporters were comparing FanLib to FanFiction.Net.)    Let’s take a look at the numbers and how they stacked up…

    Fandom   ? FanLib, # of stories   ? Date   ? Archive of Our Own, # of stories   ? Date   ?
    15/Love 0 January 3, 2008 0 June 29, 2009
    28 Days Later 1 January 29, 2008 0 June 29, 2009
    4400 9 January 30, 2008 3 June 29, 2009
    7th Heaven 3 February 2, 2008 0 June 29, 2009
    8 Simple Rules 0 February 2, 2008 0 June 29, 2009
    Absolutely Fabulous 1 February 2, 2008 0 June 29, 2009
    Alf 0 February 9, 2008 0 June 29, 2009
    Alias 38 February 9, 2008 0 June 29, 2009
    Alias Smith and Jones 2 February 9, 2008 0 June 29, 2009
    Alien 3 January 29, 2008 0 June 29, 2009
    Angel 122 February 21, 2008 92 June 29, 2009
    Battle of the Planets 25 December 13, 2007 3 June 29, 2009
    Bleach 113 January 30, 2008 23 June 29, 2009
    Brokeback Mountain 23 December 30, 2007 2 June 29, 2009
    Buffy: The Vampire Slayer 234 January 2, 2008 244 June 29, 2009
    Charmed 70 August 17, 2007 1 June 29, 2009
    CSI 250 December 7, 2007 9 June 29, 2009
    CSI: Miami 65 December 19, 2007 0 June 29, 2009
    CSI: New York 38 December 19, 2007 0 June 29, 2009
    Disney’s Gargoyles 3 December 30, 2007 0 June 29, 2009
    Dragon Ball 4 January 7, 2008 0 June 29, 2009
    Dragon Ball Z 62 January 7, 2008 0 June 29, 2009
    due South 0 June 29, 2007 265 June 29, 2009
    Final Fantasy VII 17 December 30, 2007 3 June 29, 2009
    Friends 71 August 17, 2007 1 June 29, 2009
    Gilmore Girls 220 January 30, 2008 14 June 29, 2009
    Grey’s Anatomy 27 December 18, 2007 36 June 29, 2009
    Gunsmoke 0 August 17, 2007 0 June 29, 2009
    Harry Potter 1,740 May 3, 2008 236 June 29, 2009
    House M.D. 72 January 30, 2008 203 June 29, 2009
    Inuyasha 636 January 4, 2008 1 June 29, 2009
    Kingdom Hearts 75 December 7, 2007 0 June 29, 2009
    Lois and Clark 32 December 28, 2007 0 June 29, 2009
    Lord of the Rings 130 December 8, 2007 55 June 29, 2009
    Lost 49 August 17, 2007 52 June 29, 2009
    My Chemical Romance 2 January 30, 2008 3 June 29, 2009
    Naruto 1,843 December 18, 2007 0 June 29, 2009
    NCIS 18 October 2, 2007 18 June 29, 2009
    One Tree Hill 11 August 19, 2007 0 June 29, 2009
    Pirates of the Caribbean 231 January 2, 2008 27 June 29, 2009
    Robin of Sherwood 0 January 7, 2008 0 June 29, 2009
    Sailor Moon 92 May 23, 2007 0 June 29, 2009
    Scarecrow and Mrs. King 0 January 27, 2008 0 June 29, 2009
    Smallville 84 January 11, 2008 107 June 29, 2009
    Star Wars 330 December 8, 2007 20 June 29, 2009
    Supernatural 220 December 13, 2007 241 June 29, 2009
    Thunderbirds 240 July 24, 2008 0 June 29, 2009
    X-Men 72 January 2, 2008 13 June 29, 2009
    Zelda 11 December 15, 2007 0 June 29, 2009

    Just how big is their lack of success? 1 Inuyasha story. 0 Naruto stories. 0 Sailor Moon stories.  0 CSI: Miami stories. 0 Thunderbirds stories.

    Why didn’t they take off?  There are probably a lot of reasons.  The biggest is probably because the group that founded this archive were never FanFiction.Net type users to begin with.  (Thus, FanLib was never intended for them.)  Switching from blogging software to archiving software was probably a cultural struggle that they weren’t motivated to do because the new archive didn’t have readers and would have distanced them from existing power structures in fandom that they value.  (FanFiction.Net  certainly has a power structure, popular people, ways to propell your status on the site and in fandom.  It just is probably less obvious to outsiders.)  At the same time, the creators failed to market the site.  There was no massive outreach to FanFiction.Net users, to former FanLibbers, to Quizilla users, to LiveJournal users, to AdultFanFiction.Net users. (And when they do market it, it looks like they are trying to use wank to generate traffic.  Just look at their warnings we has! announcement on metafandom.)  As a result, their major pool of authors was severely limited.  The last reason why it looks like they fail to succeed as much as FanLib is they don’t appear to believe in their own product.  People aren’t doing fake LJ cuts to it.  They aren’t delicious bookmarking it on any scale.  They just don’t appear to want to make the time commitment to make it THE next FanFiction.Net.

    Privilege!Fail has shorter life expectancy because emotional stakes are so high

    fandom news, fans Comments

    People on unfunnybusiness, lcsbanana’s blog and elsewhere have been making comparisons between Privilege!Fail and RaceFail!09.  The tactics used by the racists and the anti-warning supporters have been scrutinized and found similar.  (Some onlookers are saddened that avowed anti-racists are attacking sexual assault survivors and their allies using the tactics they recently so heartily condemned.)  But an important comparison has not been made: how long it will take/has taken for each discussion to wind down.

    I think Privilege!Fail is going to end really soon… if it hasn’t already.  Liviapenn is never going to apologize; she won’t need to.  zvi-loves-tv only needs to wait another week, maybe less, before everything returns to the status quo.  Unlike Race!Fail09, nothing will really change and the audience will be smaller and much more self-contained.

    Why?  Race!Fail09 allowed a certain degree of emotional distance.  For all the rage that poured out, it was easy enough to step back and think logically.   You could be dispassionate about it.  Privilege!Fail allows no such detached intellectual analysis.  For one side, the whole issue involves emotion, deep gut-wrenching responses to the worst kinds of violation.  And if you’re on that side, you just can’t sustain the response.   It is exhausting.  For some survivors, the whole discussion is potentially triggering, making it detrimental to their mental health.   The only way to really prolong the discussion is to continually feed the rage… and really?  That’s not the sane or emotionally healthy thing to do.

    So Privilege!Fail just isn’t going to last as long. The emotional stakes are far too high.

    Pictures from Chicago’s Pride Parade

    misc, non-fandom Comments

    Disclaimer: This has very little to do with fandom or marketing issues that might be of interest to fans.

    Yesterday, I attended Chicago’s Pride Parade with a friend.  He invited me to attend because Lisa Madigan had invited people to walk in the parade on her Fcebook fanpage.  The invite said bring a friend.  Lisa Madigan is one of my favorite politicians so it seemed like a really cool opportunity to meet her.  I’d also never been to an event like Pride and it felt about time in terms of my own coming out experience.

    Lisa Madigan’s float was number 81.  The parade officially kicked off at noon.  We didn’t leave the holding pen until around 12:45.  We didn’t reach the end of the route until about 2:35 pm.  It was wild.  The whole thing was beyond cool.  I probably took 250 pictures.  The following are about 100 from that selection.

    Click on the image for a larger view.  Images are stored on my LiveJournal scrapbook. These have not been cropped.

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    All sorts of people attended with all levels of mobility.  There seemed to be a really good job done at making things handicapped accessible.

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    The football like object is actually the ball from rugby.  I believe the float was for the professional rugby team in Chicago.
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    Some of the volunteers from Lisa Madigan’s float.

    003y862k

    Illinois Lottery float.
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    People waiting in the holding pen.
    003yc120

    I think that is Hamilton College.  Lots of hulu hooping took place during the waiting.
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    The really white white white dude with curly hair reminds me of Alice’s main squeeze Jasper from Twilight.

    003yed7t

    Lisa Madigan.
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    003yh15z

    003ykeqs

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    That crowd stretched all the way back to the El station at least a block or two away.

    003z5s9d

    It doesn’t seem possible that you could get that many people packed in like that.  It was wow, awe inspiring.
    003z6tq8

    003z74qb

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    Notice the people sitting on the portable toilets.

    003z9fs7

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    Equality Illinois.

    003zcqzw

    Young and old attended this.
    003zd9bd

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    More people sitting on portable toilets.

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    Salvation Army giving away free lemonade at their college. Their college was bordered on two sides by this parade. No place to escape from it.

    003zk2r3

    003zq4eq

    People sitting on tops of street markers. People were all over places that make you go “Huh. Is that safe? and how did you get there?”

    003zrk9s

    The halfway mark?

    003zsshe

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    The police.

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    The Green Man.

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    Hiding the protesters.

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    The protesters.

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    A political message.

    00409695

    A peek through…

    SEO advice: Commenting on blogs

    marketing Comments

    This topic came up on site-reference.com and it is a common topic for people looking to improve SEO. It is important to know about because if you’re running a fansite or fan fiction archive and wanting to learn SEO through link building, this method is probably one of the first one’s you’ll see.

    Commenting on blogs can help increase your traffic in two ways: 1) Click throughs on your name or from links in your comment. 2) Search engines if the links are not rel=nofollow.  For the second, the advice is that the more you comment on a diverse range of blogs, the more search engine juice you’ll get and the more visits from Google you’ll get.  Bad SEO people encourage you to comment as much as possible where ever the links are rel=follow.  What these bad SEO people fail to tell you is that doing so can actually hurt your SEO because you may end up on blacklist as a spammer.  People report spam to services they use like akismet, disqus, etc.  They develop their own internal blacklists.  Your hard work commenting will go to waste as comments disappear.  You risk worse for your site.

    If you want to avoid the possibility of going into a black box because of your commenting, remember the following advice:

    1. Read the article that you are responding to and respond accordingly.  Title isn’t enough to demonstrate that.  “This was interesting.  I will read more of your blog.”  is generally a sign that a comment is a spam comment and that you haven”t read the post.  (If you want to say that, e-mail the author of the blog.)
    2. Comment once in reply to a particular blog unless you’re willing to do a lot of number 1.  Several comments of  “This is fascinating.  I learned a lot from it.”  That is a great big signal that you’re not reading and you’re spam commenting.
    3. Reply with your real name.  If you comment with “Gold 4 Warcraft” instead of “John Doe,” people will REALLY think you’re link baiting/spamming and delete your comments.  If you really want to optimize for “Gold 4 Warcraft,” then blog commenting with that as your name is likely not the SEO method you want.  Comment as if you’re a real person.
    4. Watch what referrer you use to visit a blog with rel=follow. An easy way to spot comment spam is if a person self googles to see if their newly created link shows up, if the visit came through Disqus (and has 100 similar comments to their names) or includes SEO or other search terms that indicates that you are looking for a chance to link bait.

    If you want to comment for SEO, follow that advice so that your time is not wasted and you don’t get punished for spamming.  If you are paying some one for SEO and they advice blog commenting and don’t follow the above advice, fire them and get your money back.

    Michael Jackson

    fandom news Comments

    I was — I am – a child of the ’80s. It’s a label and designation I embrace with a certain pride and a lot of fondness for the arts and culture of the decade, no matter what later generations have to say about it and how much it may be looked at as “cheesy” and “superficial” today.

    Even so, I was shocked by the extent to which Michael Jackson’s passing this past week affected me. I cannot claim that I have considered myself a “fan” of his since the 80s, yet there is no denying that during my early teen years, he was legendary, and one of the primary entertainment figures of the time.

    I was too young to appreciate “Off the Wall” when it came out (although that appreciation would come later in my adult years when it became the only MJ music I would regularly hear and listen to on our local radio stations, and still say, “Damn, that’s good.”) But I can distinctly remember the impact that “Thriller” had upon its release. I remember when Michael first did his moonwalk on U.S. television. I remember how myself and all my classmates tried to imitate it for weeks afterward. I remember how the premiere of any of his music videos was a major television event. I remember when it seemed no album could ever top “Thriller” and, in some ways, if one looks at the charts, no album ever has.

    And yet, like many others, I became disillusioned with Michael in the years that followed. By the time “Bad” was released, he was already becoming a bit of a “joke” to some, a joke I laughed along with. I had passed into my later teen years and moved onto other music; in time, Michael’s music had become overshadowed to me by his weird behavior, the plastic surgeries, the accusations of child abuse and everything else. Michael was not someone who I thought had “relevance” any longer, but had become just a sad case of too much fame being gifted to someone who wasn’t equipped to deal with it, for whatever reason.

    And yet, since the shocking news of his passing a few days ago, I’ve been struck as has, I think, many out there who had dismissed him for so long as nothing but some kind of sad joke. It’s as if we’d collectively forgotten how important he was to the way the music industry had evolved and changed; how incredible a performer he’d been; how much skill and craft could be found in his music. It was an eerie experience living in a big city where, from that afternoon on Thursday through even now, days later, every car driving by on the street seemed to be blasting “Billie Jean”, “Beat It”, or “Don’t Stop ‘Till You Get Enough”. Storefronts all through my neighborhood put up makeshift tributes and posters; everyone sitting out on their porch or steps had some commentary to make about Michael. I started listening to the music again for the first time in decades and was struck by how timeless so much of it was; I rewatched performances and was immediately transported back to the first time I’d ever seen them and my awe for what he was able to do. I felt tremendously sad for what was now lost, while at the same time I felt guilty for being yet another “bandwagon” jumper instead of a so-called “true fan” who had been with Michael all of this time.

    And yet, the debate rages on about how his personal life must or should be reconciled with his artistic one. Some feel that the two cannot be judged separately; that his artistic legacy is forever tarnished or ruined by the things he did and/or was accused of doing (with or without concrete proof). Yet in a time when issues of childhood abuse and trauma are on the forefront of fandom thought, can we honestly criticize Michael Jackson’s actions without considering how his own suffered abuse no doubt shaped his later life and reported actions? I’m not sure, yet I don’t want to free him from all blame for his actions, either. Can we negate the influence he had on generations for his music, when in fact many classical artists universally revered today in academic circles would be condemned by the public for their personal behavior if it were revealed in the tabloids the way MJ’s was?

    These questions are not raised to negate the severity of issues of child and sexual abuse, should they ever be concretely proven in MJ’s case. I only mention them as this is a man who has left a very complex and not at all neat and clean legacy. The same could be said of another music legend whose passing several years ago left me seriously affected, Warren Zevon. Warren was a raging alcoholic; someone who was regularly abusive to his friends and lovers; someone who suffered from severe mental problems, who according to articles and a biography by an ex-lover was pretty far from an admirable person. And yet, I cannot not love his music; I cannot deny the positive influence it had on my life regardless of his personal behavior. I cannot deny the pleasure I had from seeing him perform live on numerous occasions and how much I still love him today for his work, even if for nothing else.

    Perhaps only time will be the judge. Perhaps it will only be in decades or even centuries that we are able to state who were truly the legendary and influential artists and creators of our time. I just have a feeling that Michael is going to end up on that short list, and I feel it was tragic that it took such a turn of events for many of us to realize this.

    Privilege wank: Where sexual assault victims are not the real victims

    fans Comments

    I’ve seen and dealt with a great deal of fandom drama.  When you’re an active participant in the community, it is just hard to avoid.  I sat out Race Fail 2009 because what could I say?  The extent to which I commented involved analytics relating to it.  It just did not feel like my place to speak out because I did not want to offend and I felt I could learn more by reading.

    But now we have privilege wank.  Actually, it is more like Privilege!Fail.  What is the privilege in this case?  Well, according to aukestrel, being sexually assaulted and a rape victim makes one privileged.  And this then became worse when some people like zvi-likes-tv appeared to imply that being a member of that class was voluntary.

    Before I get into it too much more, some back story. There were two cases of stories being posted with out warnings for rape.  In both cases, people asked the authors of those stories to post warnings because those stories were triggers for victims of sexual assault.    Both of  those authors complied but one grumbled about how she had to give in to a reader like that.  Another person took exception to that and posted a criticism of the author’s actions.  And it all went down from there with what started out as Warnings Kerfluffling before it got to the point where… well…  Let’s have some of these quotes speak for themselves:

    [info]aukestrel:
    1. One could argue, however, in this discussion of victim “privilege,” that the hurt might in fact be the result of dismantling of that privilege. I’m not saying I am arguing that. But in our current culture – in which apparently this victim, and her emotional well-being, is placed above and beyond courtesy, respect, and even common sense – and to abuse other women in fandom because they do not elevate the victim or place her rights above their own – it could be argued that cyatnite is, in fact, dismantling a privilege.

    2. I don’t think they want to think of those who disagree with them as “women.” They want to dehumanise and abuse them; they want to take away their “humanity” so that they can feel justified in saying things to them that they would never say to another woman in real life. (At least I hope not.) They want to abuse people for holding the “wrong” opinion, even though they can’t really articulate what the “right” opinion is, just that it’s compassionate, displays empathy and consideration, and is a recognition that we belong to something larger than ourselves. I have seldom been so dismayed at the actions of fans as I have been in this post, and I’ve been in fandom for 10 years. I do not know cyatnite (had never run across her before tonight) but I am honestly appalled and even disgusted at the personal attacks she was subjected to for simply having a differing opinion on this subject. One hopes that, should impertinence display a differing opinion with her followers in the next few weeks or months, a similar “compassionate” and “correct” response is not the outcome.

    [info]mara_snh:
    1. Perhaps it’s best to note that the lack of a specific warning of the sort you and others advocate might be a good enough reason to just not read that story. How much of a hardship would that be? It would also show sensitivity to the writer who worked hard to write a story filled with surprises, and to readers who enjoy being surprised. Works both ways, you know.

    5. I’m wondering if what we’re seeing here is a form of free-floating rage. It’s not uncommon for survivors of trauma to manifest this. They’ve never been able to confront their abuser and direct their anger toward him or her. They may also experience self-hatred; it may not be appropriate, but many victims of rape, especially, have been socially conditioned to accept some level of responsibility for the horrible thing that happened to them, and women carrying that awful baggage around with them might well hate themselves for it on some level. All this externalization of blame seems to me a warping of the otherwise healthy process of letting go of any sense that they brought the abuse on themselves. There’s some pretty serious pathology going on here on a community-wide scale. I wish I understood more about it, or that I had access to the therapist I can no longer afford, to get a better handle on it.

    I’m just disgusted.  I’m speaking only for myself and not for Fan History or any other admins… but I’m beyond disgusted.  I’m repulsed at the total lack of sympathy and inability to take 10 seconds to prevent a segment that is too large in our community from being inadvertently harmed by the texts that our community published.    We should not lose sight of that when see members of our community supporting anti-warning for rape, underage and BDSM positions while attacking victims of sexual assault for being fragile snowflakes who shouldn’t be online.  We need to focus on the fact that many members of our community are victims of sexual assault; they’ve been violated.  In many cases, they have doubted themselves.  They aren’t trying to exploit fandom for attention.  Rather, they are trying their damnedest to go on each day surviving something of such horror that I cannot even imagine it.  It takes ten seconds of our time, if we’re writers of fan fiction, to warn for rape, non-con, BDSM and underage. (That’s all that is being asked for.  No warnings about cutting Blair’s hair.  No warnings for the color orange.  No pairing warnings.)  By spending those extra ten seconds, we are being good members of the community.

    And that’s what we should strive for. If, by using this one small, quickly-made addition to our fics, we can keep from triggering someone who has been violated, why shouldn’t we do it? It just feels like the ethical thing to do.  I’d want the same from others and I’d do the same for others because fandom is a community.  In many places where we publish fan fiction, it is a wonderful community full of supportive women whom we can count on inside fandom and out.  This one small thing requires no work and helps prevent harm to large numbers of people in our community.   I fully support warnings for rape, non-con, underage and BDSM.  I hope you do too.

    And if you don’t and you’re on my FList on LiveJournal on I follow you on Twitter, let me know so I can unfriend/unfollow you.

    Animethon: An ANIME convention that’s only for the non-yaoi/non-yuri people

    conventions Comments

    Whether you like it or not, yaoi and yuri are fundamentally part of the Anime community.  You can’t remove it.  (Though white washing it out of American translations of manga and when dubbing anime into English has been tried.)  It is not going to go away.  So if you’re going to run an anime convention, you have to deal with this reality.  Unless the event is explicitly billed as a child friendly event with no adult content allowed, members of the anime community are going to expect that yaoi and yuri are going to be tolerated.

    Sadly, Animethon’s organizers failed to get this message.   Rather than claim to be a convention that is child friendly, the organizer decided that the convention would be anti-yaoi by prohibiting same sex kissing for cosplay events on stage.  Heterosexual kissing was still allowed.  She wasn’t discriminating against gays and lesbians because she has gay and lesbians friends and she likes them.  (Thanks but no.  That’s a cop out.  I have Gay friends =/=  I am tolerant.  It is insulting to our intelligence.)  When called out on it, she finally decided to allow same sex pecks on the cheek because heterosexual friends of the same gender give pecks on the cheek.  That’s her ode to tolerance.  Makes her a special kind of fandom snowflake where heterosexual same sex kissing is okay but homosexual same sex kissing is not.

    She then spelled it out quite clearly: Animethon is not the place for large population in the anime community who like, read and watch anime and manga.  If you want that, go to Yaoicon.  (Because anime isn’t about the gays and lesbians and yaoi and yuri.)  Frankly, I think that’s a good idea.  If there is anyone in Alberta, Canada thinking of going to Animethon, don’t and tell the organizer why.

    Chicago Bandits are win!

    fans Comments

    I’ve been meaning to post this for the past week but life got in the way.  On June 13, I attended a Chicago Bandits game.  I’d made a deal with a friend that I would pay for Bandits if he paid for Red Stars tickets.  I was looking for an alternative to the Chicago Cubs because well, I’d gone to five games this season and the Cubs won twice.  The games are also a bit expensive to attend.  I also wanted to support women’s professional athletics.  This team seemed to fit the bill all around.

    And you know?  I had a great time.  I got my picture taken with the mascot.  The game was affordable. ($10 for our tickets.  Cheap food.  No parking fees. Not much gas spent to get to the game.)  Our seats were awesome.  The crowd was enthusiastic.  Fans had a good sense of sportsmanship that can be absent from Cubs games.  They cheered for both teams when good plays were made.  (Which was confusing as there were strange silences on occasion when people realized they had cheered too enthusiastically for the opposing team. But still?  How can you fault that sportsmanship?)  The quality of play was excellent.  There were Olympians on the field.  It was a lot of fun.  The whole experience was made of win.

    So if you get the chance, check out their website and attend a game. If you don’t want to go to a game by yourself, let me know and maybe we can go together. :D

    Help:Fanzines

    Fan History admin Comments

    We’ve created a Help page for fanzines.  It really needs some additional work in terms of categories, titles, etc.  We wanted something up officially to address concerns have have appeared regarding preservation movements around media fanzines.  The following is our current version.


    Purpose

    The purpose of Fan History’s fanzine articles is to preserve the history of fanzines in the community. Fanzines have long been an important part of all areas of fandom: music, media, science fiction, sports, and punk, just to name a few. Fanzines provide a window into a specific time in fandom history; trends in writing, art and discussion; as well as many other aspects of fandom life and creativity which can be important in understanding the history of fandom.

    That said, Fan History recognizes the issues that can exist in providing documentation of materials that may have been meant to be transient in nature, or may include information considered sensitive that creators and contributors may not wish to be publicly accessible today. Our policies regarding fanzine articles, artwork and content have been designed to provide both freedom of contributors to add information they consider valuable to fannish history, as well as avenues for creators to request removal of material they do not wish to have listed or archived electronically in any fashion.

    Our promise

    Fan History promises to never digitally provide the majority or entire contents of a fanzine on Fan History without consent of the fanzine publisher. If a publisher and individual contributors specifically wish for their materials to be archived for posterity, we can work with those individuals to provide hosting of such content. In general, however, our fanzine entries include a brief description of contents (including a table of contents when available), cover art (when available), publication history, a description of its relevance to fandom, and fan reactions.

    Fanzine article deletion

    See Help:Article deletion#Fanzine article deletion request.

    Fanzine cover art deletion

    See Help:Article deletion#Fan art and fanzine covers.

    Template

    A template for fanzine can be found at Template:Fanzine. To use this template, search for the fanzine title. If it does not exist, click on “Create this page.” In a different window/tab, click edit on Template:Fanzine. Copy and paste the contents of Template:Fanzine to your new blank article. Fill out as much information as possible.

    Admin: Update on Fan History’s deletion policy

    Fan History admin Comments

    Fan History recently clarified our deletion policies in response to on wiki deletion requests related to fanzine covers.   The following is the current version that is subject to change as we continue to evaluate and refine our policies.  If we make any major changes to this, we will make a new post.


    Fan art and fanzine covers

    Fan art, including fanzine covers, presents an issue of specific concern at Fan History. We believe that fan artists should have control over where their work is hosted, yet wiki contributors may feel that the inclusion of a piece of fan art is important in an article when documenting fannish history. (“Fan art” as Fan History defines it for these purposes includes but is not necessarily limited to photomanipulations and original hand-drawn or digitally-created artwork of fannish content. Please note that simple screencaptures, magazine/article scans, and other images which have not been significantly altered from another copyright holder’s image, video, or other property is not considered “fan art”.)

    Likewise, Fan History believes that we can complete our mission of documenting the history of fanzines in fandom without copies of fanzine covers. We also believe that, in general, we comply with fair use when we upload copies of covers. These covers can illustrate the contents of a fanzine, artist styles during certain time periods, help people understand who fan artists were that were active in fandom. Because of this, we allow users to submit fanzine covers.

    We will honor requests that fanzine cover art and other types of fan art be deleted. If you are the creator of a piece of fan art to be deleted (or the publisher of a ‘zine which included a piece of fan art) you should complete the following steps to have any uploaded images removed:

    1. E-mail delete@fanhistory.com. The e-mail should include:
      • Links to all cover/fan art that you wish to be deleted.
      • Some proof that you are the artist (or publisher for the fanzine including the piece of fan art).

    After you have made this request including the necessary information, please allow up to two weeks for an administrator to respond. The administrator will delete the images. If an article includes the image, it will either be replaced with an image saying the cover art has been deleted at the artist’s request or the image link will be removed from the article. After the administrator has completed these steps, you will receive an e-mail confirming this. (You can also monitor the wiki to check for these changes.) Please note that, as with article deletion requests, it is up to the creator of the removed image to monitor the wiki to see that the image is not re-uploaded at a later time, and to submit a new deletion request if it is.


    Fanzine article deletion request

    If you are the publisher of a fanzine, you may request an article about your fanzines be deleted. The process is similar to that of people article deletion requests. This is done as a courtesy to the fan community. Requests will be honored depending on the availability of Fan History’s staff and the rationale behind the reason for requesting deletion. Please allow up to two weeks for a response from the administrators upon submitting a request.

    1. The publisher of the fanzine featured in the the article in question sends an e-mail to delete@fanhistory.com. The e-mail should include the following:
      • The url of the article(s) that the person is seeking to have be deleted. Without this information the administrators may not be able to find your entry.
      • Proof that the person is the publisher of those fanzines.
      • A rationale for deleting of the article(s).
      • An acknowledgment that the publisher understands that Fan History is a wiki that anyone can edit, and that it is their job to monitor the wiki to make certain no one creates a new article on the same subject, as it is not the administrators’ job to do so.
    2. After having e-mailed the deletion request, the deletion requestor must add the following text to the talk page (see the “talk” tab) of the article to be deleted:
    {{Fanzine ADR}}

    This will add a text box that looks like:

    The publisher of this fanzine requests that wiki contributors not recreate the article.

    The publisher that made this request understands that Fan History is a wiki and that anyone can recreate the article using a different title. They ask that you do not. Please respect their wishes or contact them for additional details.

    . After you have done that, type (or copy and paste) the following message:

    I am the publisher of this fanzine and I have requested that this article be deleted from Fan History. I ask that other contributors to the wiki please respect my wishes to not be included. I understand that this is a wiki and that other contributors may choose to create another article about me or reference this fanzine elsewhere in the wiki. Because of that, I understand it is my job to regularly check that no one has created a similar article against my wishes. –~~~~

    After both of those steps have been completed, the rationale for deletion and importance of the fanzine in fandom history will be reviewed. Depending on the rationale involved, the article will most likely be deleted. If the rationale is deemed insufficient or the fanzine has been determined to be too important to the history of fandom, the article will not be deleted. If that happens, the following template will be placed on the article page:

    This article is not eligible for deletion because it does not meet ADR requirements.

    Please see the talk page for this article for additional information detailing what made this article notable. If this article is about you and you have questions, please see your talk page or e-mail support[@]fanhistory[.]com.

    The ADR request will be removed from the talk page and there will be additional comment on the talk page explaining why.


    Can you explain notability some more?

    Fan History has a policy not to delete articles about fans who are determined to be notable. The definition of notable is up to the discretion of the administrator dealing with the deletion request. In most cases, administrators consult with others before determining if a person is notable.

    General guidelines: Not notable

    • A fan is not notable if the article is was created by a bot and has had no edits to it since,
    • A fan is not notable if they are not mentioned on other articles on Fan History,
    • A fan is not notable if they have very little google exposure, and
    • A fan is not notable if they have fewer than 20 fans, “followers” or “friends” on services like Twitter or LiveJournal.

    General guidelines: Notable

    • A fan is notable if they have been featured on fandom wank,
    • A fan is notable if they have been mentioned by mainstream media, and
    • A fan is notable if they have more than 1000 followers on a social media service like Twitter or LiveJournal.
    • A fanzine is notable if there was a major kerfluffle around it.
    • A fanzine may be notable if it won an award like a FanQ.
    • A fanzine may be notable if it is represents a trend in fanzine production, content or because of the contributors.
    • A fanzine may be notable if it has been cited and/or mentioned in a professionally published book or academic article on fandom.

    When there is a question regarding notability, the practice is to error on the side of non-notable.

    Question and answer:

    Fan History admin Comments

    I recieved an e-mail.  It basically asked the following question: I want to contribute to an article but I’m hesitant because I might be biased.  How can I still edit?

    My answer:
    1.  Comment on the talk page before editing to say that you’re trying to be as neutral as possible and ask others to help check your edits to make sure they are neutral.  (It demonstrates good faith on your part and is  signal to admins that you’re trying.)
    2.  Where you know you can’t be unbiased, create a section that says “MY NAME’s perspective’, at the top of that section, put {{MP}} and follow the directions outlined at http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/Help:Multiple_perspectives .
    3.  When you’re editing in, comment using <!– to explain what you’re doing in the article’s source code to explain your opinion in the text.
    4.  Screen cap and cite everywhere to make your point.  If quoting, try to avoid taking things out of context.  Try to quote primary sources when you can.
    5.  If an administrator comments on the edit, respond back and try to work with them.  If some one later has an issue with the edits, we’ll have a record of what happened.  It makes resolving potential conflict easier.
    6.  Don’t fret too much if you’re concerned about bias.  People who are self aware of bias and work towards trying to make sure they are not being biased tend to be less biased.

    More about Fan History’s fanzine section

    Fan History admin Comments

    This was an e-mail I sent elsewhere.  I’ve reposted it minus the introduction and the quoted text.


    Recently, Fan History received a couple of fanzine cover deletion
    requests. We had a policy on the wiki which for fan art was e-mail us
    and prove that you’re the artist and we’ll delete the fan art. It was
    not very detailed. We’d never really had an issue with this material
    where we felt we needed to clarify our policy regarding that. The
    deletion requests gave us reason to clarify both our policy in regards
    to fanzine related articles and fanart. 1.6.1 Fan art and fanzine covers
    <http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/Help:Article_deletion#Fan_art_and_fanzin\
    e_covers
    > is our fanart and fanzine cover policy. 1.7 Fanzine article
    deletion request
    <http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/Help:Article_deletion#Fanzine_article_de\
    letion_request
    > is our fanzine article deletion policy. Summarizing
    them: If you are a fanzine publisher or fanartist, drop us an e-mail and
    we’ll delete the cover. In regards to fanzines, if the fanzine is
    non-notable, we’ll probably delete it if you can give us a good reason.
    We know that many people published them in pre-Internet days before real
    name issues were as problematic as they can be now. We’ll try to be as
    accomodating as possible.

    Fan History has a fair amount of information about fanzines already.
    That can be found at http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/Category:Fanzines
    <http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/Category:Fanzines> . There is
    probably information about 2,000 fanzines on Fan History. We’re really
    proud of our Star Wars
    <http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/Category:Star_Wars_fanzines> , Star
    Trek <http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/Category:Star_Trek_fanzines> ,
    Forever Knight
    <http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/Category:Forever_Knight_fanzines> ,
    Doctor Who <http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/Category:Doctor_Who_fanzines>
    , Rat Patrol
    <http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/Category:Rat_Patrol_fanzines>
    sections. Many articles have cover art, publishing histories, summaries
    of fan responses to the fanzine, links for more information, etc. What
    these articles don’t have and will never have is the complete fanzine in
    image format unless we’re given permission to redistribute a zine in
    that fashion. In one or two cases, (I’m thinking a Led Zeppelin
    drawerfic type zine) we may have extracts of a few pages. We’d argue
    these are fair use and if called on them, we would remove them. We’re
    just not set up to be a redistributor of fanzines in image format. Our
    mission isn’t to do that and we don’t have any intention of doing that.
    (And most especially not charging people to make copies. I’ve seen
    enough of the discussion on mailing lists regarding the reprinting of
    fanzines with out permission to know some people find it repulsive and I
    don’t want Fan History associated with that.) Our mission is to
    document that these fanzines existed, this is what the cover looked
    like, these fandoms were involved with the zine, these people were
    involved in the production of this material.

    We’d also like to think that for fanzine publishers and authors with
    material in fanzines that we’d be useful to you as another place where
    you can promote your fanzines. We don’t have a problem with a fanzine
    publisher coming in and including links to where you can buy the fanzine
    online, what convention the publisher will be at and selling the
    fanzine, etc. Commercial links like that, as long as they fit in to the
    article and follow our rules <http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/Help:Rules>
    are more than welcome.

    If you have any questions about our deletion policy, our fanzine section
    or anything else regarding Fan History, please feel free to e-mail me at
    laura@… or one of our admins at support@….
    You can also reach us by commenting on the talk page for articles or
    categories you have questions for. In fact, we’d almost prefer the
    second because if you have questions, some one else might have the same
    one and clarifying our policies through the use of talk pages helps out
    everyone in fandom. (And it holds us more accountable because our
    actions are then part of the public record.)

    Thanks for reading.

    Sincerely,
    Laura

    What’s hot on Fan History for June 14 to June 20, 2009

    misc Comments

    More Fan History traffic information and looking at what is popular. This edition includes our most popular traffic sources outside search, our most popular articles and our most popular keyword based searches for the week of June 14 to June 20, 2009.

    Most popular articles
    11,909 pages were viewed a total of 43,428 times

    1. Draco/Hermione – 785 times
    2. Cassandra Claire – 359 times
    3. Race Fail 2009 – 338 times
    4. Sakura Lemon Fan-Fiction Archive – 329 times
    5. Russet Noon – 233 times
    6. AdultFanFiction.Net – 228 times
    7. Naruto – 200 times
    8. FanFiction.Net – 195 times
    9. Hurt/Comfort – 194 times
    10. Digimon – 175 times
    11. Laura – 144 times

    Our most popular pages mostly had fewer views this month. Some of this is probably because we had 600 fewer article views this past week.

    Top non-search referrers
    Referring sites sent 2,435 visits via 337 sources

    1. animenewsnetwork.com – 301 visits
    2. chickipedia.com – 233 visits
    3. community.livejournal.com – 147 visits
    4. journalfen.net – 126 visits
    5. fanfiction.net – 96 visits
    6. twitter.com – 84 visits
    7. partly-bouncy.livejournal.com – 80 visits
    8. fanpop.com – 78 visits
    9. tvtropes.org – 63 visits
    10. deviantart.com – 47 visits

    200 fewer visits this past week from referrers. A lot of this can be attributed to getting less traffic related from fandom_wank. There were a few sources that moved up or down. There was only one site that dropped off and one new one appearing.

    Search key phrases
    Search sent 11,657 total visits via 8,264 keywords

    1. emo porn – 87 visits
    2. galbadia hotel – 66 visits
    3. naruto wiki – 59 visits
    4. restricted section – 47 visits
    5. adult fanfiction – 46 visits
    6. gosselins without pity – 46 visits
    7. adultfanfiction – 39 visits
    8. draco hermione – 38 visits
    9. sakura lemon – 36 visits
    10. fanhistory – 34 visits

    Our search traffic was a bit down this past week. This was by about 400 visits and 300 key phrases. Some terms moved up and other terms moved down.

    The A-Slash is looking for a new archivist

    fandom news Comments

    The A-Slash, a really great little group of A-Team slash writers, is looking for a new volunteer archivist for their website. The list is low volume (less than 20 active members) and dedicated to quality writing. The maintainer would be happy to take on an assistant who would be willing to get the archive up-to-date, as it hasn’t been updated in 2 years to reflect new postings on the yahoogroup. You can contact the maintainer if you might be interested in helping out and learning more about what would be involved.

    Oldie but still interesting… Supernatural: Does fandom activity correlate to the release of canon?

    misc Comments

    I wrote this back in 2006.  If I was doing it again, I would change a great many things about the methodology involved.  Still, feels interesting so I’m reposting it on Fan History’s blog for the sake of posterity.


    Begin original post

    I had one of those la la la, I so smart and funny moments. I wanted to play with numbers again to avoid things which I should be doing. The hypothesis was that posting volume, community creation and other fannish activity correlated with the release of canon.

    Story totals were added by hand based on date PUBLISHED, not last updated. The little table at the bottom is how the totals correlate with total new episodes per month in the USA + DVD releases. (I wish I had Australian, British and Canadian totals. I could not find that info.) No strong correlations there.

    I divided the mailing list by 1000 just so it make the visual easier in chart format.

    Conclusion: I so wrong. Whoops. No strong correlations anywhere. Not what I thought. It was what the people I other wise bugged and annoyed on AIM thought. It does help to explain the idea though possibly why fandoms continue long after the show goes off the air… because no correlation between airing of stuff and fan activity.

    Or simpler: Fandom = Random.

    And while at it, Fan History article on Supernatural. Please feel free to edit, add information about the fandom. Charts are cross posted there too.

    Yes, Encyclopedia Dramatica is down

    wikis Comments

    It is down.  We know.  The folks who run Encyclopedia Dramatica is down.   They have been hard at work bringing it up.   Please be patient and give them time. :)   If you want updatesm you might want to check out their chat room on IRC.

    While at it, yourwiki has been a bit slow as some one uploaded over 1,500 images this week.  They are hard at work too.

    Check out WhatPort80

    wikis Comments

    This is another case of being a bit sloth like.   I promised to plug WhatPort80 and it has taken me a while to do that.  WhatPort80 is another wiki site.  On their about page, they describe themselves as:

    WhatPort80 is a collection of internet information for your reading pleasure. All material submitted should be work safe. Any non-worksafe images or language will be deleted. If you’d like to contribute to a wiki that allows Non-worksafe content, Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Dramatica may be more to your liking.

    They really push the limits of what is work safe and what is not because some images are highly suggestive using objects/fruit and flesh colored clothing.   Still, it is very damned cool and has a lot of great potential.  One article I really like is Lulz because I like the caption below the image.  The jokes feel accessible to me and where I am online.  Please check them out. :)

    yourwiki.net

    misc Comments

    I love irc.  I love irc.freenode.net.  There are a number of wiki related chat rooms on there and a month or so ago, an acquaintence introduced me to yourwiki.net.  It is a wiki hosting company that is run by a couple of friends.  At the moment, they are pretty small and they aren’t focused on making money.  Rather, they are focused on offering great support that being a small wiki host allows them.

    yourwiki.net is a traditional wiki farm of sorts in that there is a shared user base across multiple wikis.   This is similar to how PBWiki and Wikia work.  This can be great for community building on your wiki because there is a larger pool of contributors from which you can edit.

    They currently make some money with google ads.  None of them are in the content area.  In the near future, they will be launching premium accounts so you can have an ad free wiki.

    If you’re looking for a first wiki and don’t want to pay for hosting, this is an option you might want to consider.  The directs below are from their About page and tell you how to get a new wiki:

    First, you’ll need to Login or Create an Account so we can keep track of who owns the wiki. After you have done that, you may request a wiki on Meta Wiki, our collaboration site about YourWiki. If you cannot create an account for whatever reason, just send us an e-mail and we’ll work with you; Just send us a preferred username.

    If a big wiki is impractical for a small subject you want to write on, then you can create a Mini Wiki. Mini Wikis can be created by anyone. Although they aren’t full wikis, they’re still perfect to use for small public projects.

    If anyone else knows wiki projects like yourwiki.net worth supporting, drop me an e-mail and I can happily plug.

    Update: Permabanned users policy change

    Fan History admin Comments

    We’ve had a couple of instances in the past where we have permabanned users.  We haven’t really formalized this policy to give us flexibility and to allow for our administrators to try to give people the benefit of the doubt.  What this means in practice is that people get one or two  bans that last two weeks each.  The second or third violation of [[Help:Rules]] results in a permaban.  Most permabans are as a result for article blanking, where the individual has been told not to do that. In cases of what look like automated spam bot link baiting or behavior that is truly egregious, people may also be permabanned.  Accounts that we can prove are sock puppets trying to get around a ban also may be permabanned.  Flexibility is helpful because we may screw up and we can undo our actions with out being locked in to a procedure that may not be appropiate for a situation.

    Previously, we had not kept a list of permabanned users because there just did not appear to need to be a reason to.  When we permabanned users for repeated rule violations (like blanking or malicious behavior), an administrator had generally commented on relevant talk to let the individual know.   Recent events on the wiki have caused us to re-evaluate how we handled this situation.

    In the future when a user is permabanned, their user page will appear in a special category and their user page will have an article box put on it that explains that the user was permabanned.

    If anyone has any questions or suggestions regarding how to handle these situations, please let us know.

    Update: Article deletion procedure changed for administrators

    Fan History admin Comments

    We’ve changed our policies in regards to how administrators handle deletion requests.  Most people submitting article deletion requests won’t be effected by this uness they are notable.  For the record, a copy of the parts of the procedure that have been revised are:

    If the user has not completed those tasks and is non-notable, e-mail them back with directions as to what tasks they need to complete before the deletion request can be honored. You may need to provide the user with alternative means of contact so you can verify the deletion request comes from the person that the article is about. This may include giving your FanFiction.Net or LiveJournal contact information for verification purposes. If you do not have that account type, see the list of official Fan History profiles on the Fan History administrator community and ask them to contact you there.

    If a user has completed all the tasks and is non-notable:

    • delete the article on the wiki,
    • lock the article so that no one can edit the article, and
    • e-mail the person who made the request to tell them the article has been deleted. The e-mail should make the following points:
      • the user should regularly check the wiki to make sure no one has mentioned them elsewhere or recreated the article under a similar name,
      • Fan History does not monitor to make sure that they are not mentioned elsewhere in the wiki or that someone has not created an article with a similar name, and
      • the user should feel free to contact you regarding any additional concerns they have about the wiki.

    If a user has completed all tasks and is notable,

    • edit the article to include {{Not eligible}} at the top of the article,
    • comment on the talk page to explain why the article about the individual is not eligible for deletion,
    • contact the individual via e-mail to explain that the article will not be deleted. The e-mail should make the following points:
      • the individual has been determined to be notable,
      • because it is not eligible for deletion, Fan History will work with the individual to make the article work better for them with the understanding that the core contents remain and will not be deleted, and
      • the user should feel free to contact you regarding any additional concerns they have about the wiki.

    Things to remember:

    If you have any questions about this procedural change, please let us know.  The reason for the change is to create a formal procedure for addressing articles about people that are notable, where articles are not eligible for deletion.

    LiveJournal’s User Advisory Board

    Fan History admin Comments

    I’ve nominated myself for the LiveJournal User Advisory Board. I need 300 nomination support votes to get on the ballot. Please help. LiveJournal’s directions for doing that are:

    To support a nominee’s candidacy, you should comment to their nomination entry stating “I support this nomination” or something substantially similar. You may support multiple candidates’ nominations. Nominees need 300 motions of support in order to be invited to be a candidate in the election. Candidates are asked to assist by only unscreening those comments that express this motion of support, and election moderators will help with that process.

    Thanks for your support and any help you can provide in getting me on the ballot.