Our history, in our own words, in our own voices.
This essay about the history of media fandom showcases the efforts of many volunteers over the last 6 years. The essay relies heavily on Fanlore articles about fanzines and fandom events from the 1970s-1990s. Fanlore, in turn benefited from the scans made by dozens of fanzine and letterzine owners and publishers across the world as part of the Sandy Hereld Memorial Collection. And as soon as we finish transcribing the oral histories recorded at various US conventions, there will be more first hand records of our history.
Without these first hand records, our community and history could not only vanish, but it could also run the risk of being twisted and misrepresented. One of the more powerfully subversive acts is to record your own history, in your own words, in your own voice.
Or as Spock would say: “Dif-tor heh smusma.”
Podfic: The Early Years (or Why Susan Garrett Was Awesome)
The year: 1984
The place: Universal Translator, a newsletter
A fan writes:
“…an open letter to zine editors and fan writers requesting some thoughts and feedback on the subject of tape recording stories from fanzines. "I’ve recently become involved in a tape correspondence with an ST fan who is visually handicapped, and have been taping an occasional story from one of my fanzines to sent to her. In all honesty, I don’t feel this is abusing anyone’s rights or violating anyone’s copyright, any more than the very common practice of lending out or trading zines. The basic question I’m posing here is: At what point does the practice stop being friendly sharing and become zine piracy? Suppose the tape is passed to a third party and beyond? Or suppose someone should decide to produce multiple copies of tapes for general distribution? Obviously, at some point, permission to sued the material is necessary. At what point? And who is authorized to give it – the author, the zine editor, or both? There is also the question of reimbursement. If multiple copies are made, is a contributor’s copy in order? If the tapes are sold at a profit, are royalties to be expected? And in either case, who is entitled to that reimbursement – again, the author or editor?”
and a fan responds: “Susan Garrett gives her permission for fans to make tape recordings of her fiction under certain circumstances, an early example of a form of blanket permission to podfic: ”… I hereby give permission to audio tape any amateur story written under my name, or a pseudonym, for the purposes of making the material available to handicapped fans. Also, as an editor, I am willing to contact contributors to my zines, should there be an interest in having one of their stories verbally transcribed.“
(links go to Fanlore, the fan run wiki about media fandom)
What Is This ‘Fanlore’ Of Which You Speak?
Fanlore is a fan run wiki that allows TV and movie fans to tell their fandom history in their own voices. Often fandom activities are trivialized and dismissed and ignored because they are seen as unimportant. For example, on the main Wikipedia, an entry about a large Harry Potter convention in the UK was deleted because it was just was “….just a school get together with Harry Potter fans.”
But I realized that in my many postings about Fanlore, I have not really gone into detail how wikis in general work. I also realized that some of the collaboration methods used by wikis are not obvious. Until recently I had only used Wikipedia (the main one) as an occasional resource – it was not until I started editing that I started to grasp Wiki collaboration methods. So hopefully, this post will be of use to some of you.
Wikis are communal spaces and are open to anyone to read and edit. They are volunteer run and not directed (everyone works on the areas that interest them). That often trips up people because we expect there to be a central organization directing volunteer efforts. It also means there will be gaps and inaccuracies because there may be many hands touching a page. Conversely, there may be too few hands touching a page. More importantly, if someone does not supply the correct information, it will not get added to the wiki. All wikis face the same hurdles – getting accurate information and getting enough volunteers to add that information.
Luckily there are ways to help make wikis more accurate. You can make edits in several ways:
1. Create a free account and make them yourself. This is often the fastest way to get the corrections made and the most accurate. If you do make the edits yourself, remember to familiarize yourself with the wiki’s editorial polices as they vary from wiki to wiki (Fanlore for example has a plural point of view policy which allows more perspectives to be added to an article than typically allowed in academic or research wikis).
2. Leave a message on the “Talk” page (every page has its own discussion page). This also requires an account and can be overlooked because there are tens of thousands of pages.
3. Send a message to the Gardeners mailing list. If you do this, please remember to include a link to the page that needs to be edited, along with what is wrong and what needs to be added to be corrected. General or vague corrections are less likely to be implemented than specific ones. The gardeners list is also volunteer staffed and it is a general mailing list. This means no one is “assigned” to monitor it, your messages go the entire group of volunteers who may – or may not – be online. But depending on who is online and available, you may (a) have your edits made and get an confirming email, (b) have your edits made and receive no confirming email, © have someone contact you for more info or (d) your edits may not be made because no one was reading the mailing list that day/week or your message never reached the mailing list . In which case you can always use any of the above methods or try again.
As with all volunteer efforts, I find it helps to have patience and an understanding that people are doing the work for love and in their spare time.
So grab your keyboards and head over Fanlore to add what you love about fandom.
zombiewretch:
SOMEONE WENT TO A STAR TREK CONVENTION IN THE 1980’S AS SPOCK AND KIRK’S PENISES I AM NOT MAKING THIS SHIT UP
THEY PERFORMED SPIRK THROUGH INTERPRETIVE DANCE
I remember making this screencap for the Fanlore page. Wonderful to see it being remembered here.
And speaking of memories….Memories (or the lack of them) is one of the many reasons for Fanlore to exist. I watched the skit on videotape with my friend Sandy in the 1990s…I know this because she wrote a post to Virgule, the slash mailing list describing our glee and joy and hysteria. An email which I found 20+ years later tucked away in a folder. But in 2011, when someone asked me about the Dancing Penii, I had no memory of the skit. Or ever having watched it. The image must have been too powerful to hold in my memory. So I began researching in order to add more history to the Fanlore page. And that’s how the screencap and Kandy’s description of the skit found its way there.