Podfic Entries on Fanlore

[paraka]

There's currently a discussion post going on at fanlore about how podfic entries should be made. I'd really appreciate hearing more opinions from podficcers on the matter.

For those interested, here's a little background on the situation.

Back in June there was a post on fanlore asking for suggestions of useful subcategories for the Fanworks category. anatsuno suggested a podfic subcategory. A template and category for podfic was created, but with a sort of warning air to the discussion that there needs to be more podfic entries on Fanlore to justify having the category.

In response to this, and in honour of amplirecathon, I made it a personal goal to make a Fanlore page for every podfic that was rec'ed over there. Using the new podfic template and the Written by the Victors podfic page as a reference I started making entries. I uploaded about 20 of them in July, only to have them all edited by Fanlore Gardeners right away. I had named the pages in the same format as Written by the Victors (podfic) page, but it turns out, you only add the (podfic) honourific if there's a need to disambiguate it from another page. Since most of the pages I was making didn't have any conflicting pages on Fanlore they were all renamed to "Title" instead of "Title (podfic)"

I was slightly uncomfortable with this but didn't want to go against Fanlore's rules, so just kind of left things as they were. Until this week when it was noticed that the entry for This Never Happened had been changed. Which, of course, it's a wiki, people make changes, but in this case, the entry about a podfic was changed to say that This Never Happened is a fic which happened to have a podfic about it.

There was nothing meaningful added about the fic to the entry, all the info in the entry was still about the podfic. The change just... left the impression that the fic was the "real" fanwork and that the podfic was just something that happened because of it.

And I'm not saying that's what the editor was intending to do. But... I think that's how a lot of fandom sees podfic. As this thing that happens to fanfics, but isn't very notable on it's own. The thread on fail_fandomanon certainly implies this (note, that thread is in response to the initial discussions over podfic entries on Fanlore, but they completely misinterpreted what was going on).

I feel that, until there's some stronger indication in the Fanlore entries that the entry is about the podfic well meaning editors are going to continue changing them so they're fic entries which happen to have podfics. The entry on fanlore is discussing different ways we can make this happen but it's also kindled a new discussion about whether or not podfics should have their own pages, which frustrates me and also confirms that podfic isn't being thought of as its own work. So yeah, more voices in this would be appreciated.

Comments

[paraka]

Yeah, I listened to dodi's podcast too. All the podficcers on my feed got pretty riled up over the FFA thread.

Things are changing though. And I'll admit, when I have more energy to spare, feeling like a pioneer of podfic is actually one of the things I enjoy most about podfic fandom. When I first got into fandom I was pretty into vids and obsessed over them, but not like I do podfic, because vids didn't need that. This way is a lot more fulfilling, it just takes a lot more energy.

[jelazakazone]

I am raising two kids. I know exactly what you mean. ♥

(I stayed away from the FFA thread. I stay away from it on principle. I need fandom to be a happy shiny place for me.)