Fandom: Just A Bunch Of Non-Notable People Getting Together And Doing Nothing Notable. Not!
On occasion, the main Wikipedia takes the position that fandom activities are not “notable”. Case in point:
Sectus = 450 fans attend a Harry Potter convention, a 4 day series of fannish and scholarly events. Wikipedia deletes the convention page: The convention is not notable and not worth documenting because it “…is just a school get together with Harry Potter fans.”
In contrast, see Fanlore’s Sectus convention page. Fanlore is a fan run, non-profit wiki that focuses on media fandom history. You do not have to be a BNF or “notable” to be included. And anyone can participate in editing.
But it is not just media fandom that gets the side eye. The Bay Area Science Fiction Association (a fan club for sci-fi fans) was almost deleted because the fan club had not been mentioned by any “third party sources.” (“Articles by notable people that cover BASFA in some detail, a solid history in a notable fanzine, notable events that BASFA has had a recognised role in or organised”).
The page was finally allowed to remain, but it was touch and go for a while: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Bay_Area_Science_Fiction_Association
And RE: last reblog
krytella:
I wish I had access to any video footage of 80s and 90s cons, especially the slash cons. And that I knew how to vid. Because I have a deep desire for there to be a vid about the history of women’s fan community going back into the 70s and 80s and the beginning of slash which was really the beginning for the western fanwork communities out there today. And it would be set to “We Can’t Stop” by Miley Cyrus, because I feel like it. And OUR fandom is OUR house.
There was some video footage made of the skits and plays and possibly the banquets of Zebracon (we know this because we saw the ads for the VHS and Betamax tapes in various letterzines in the late 70s and 1980s). As far as I know, those tapes are long gone.
Stacey D (who passed recently) videotaped parts of one Escapade in the 1990s. Most of us were not thrilled with it, but the tape (now transfered to DVD) exists. I think it was sent to the Fanzine Archives but I cannot be certain. And Mary Van Duesen included fan footage in a few of her songvids. She posted one of them on her website.
(links go to Fanlore, the fan run non-profit wiki about fandom)
esteefee:
dsudis:
liveship:
yahtzee63:
pangeasplits:
thefirstmrshummel:
daughterofscotland:
stoney321:
stoney321:
I went on record when I first found Kindred Spirits uploaded to GR back in April, and with artwork added that belonged to sinyhale, that I wasn’t okay with it. She wasn’t notified…
Most definitely this is not okay, and doesn’t have my permission. That said, I spend so little time on GoodReads that I don’t really know what’s up here. Is this person posting links to the fics? Are these under our fanfic pseuds? Any info much appreciated.
your fic is listed here. honestly, I’m a little confused, because while I’ve been familiar with the unfortunate phenomenon of fic being added to GR, as far as I can tell the works themselves are not actually being uploaded to or archived on the site.
As someone listed in the original post who’s been aware for a while that about eight of my stories are on GoodReads, I’m not fussed about this at all. The actual story has not been uploaded (although in one case fanart associated with the story was uploaded as a cover, which I agree ought to have had the fanartist’s permission).
Otherwise, though, this is like getting worked up about a link to your story being on pinboard or delicious or a recs site—GoodReads isn’t a professional review forum, it’s a website where people talk about what they’ve been reading lately and whether they liked it. It strikes me as sort of a weird place to talk about fanfic, but clearly there’s some subset of fanfic readers who congregate there.
Even when it comes to the covers, they are only doing thumbnails. Which is akin, to my mind, of pulling a quote from the story for reviews. Fair use, on both counts, for reviewing. (But I speak as someone who generally, unless I’m lucky, does her own cover art.)
I have no problem with authors adding notes to their fanfic about where they want their fic to be discussed. Just as I have no problem with fans not seeing those requests or upon seeing them, deciding to go ahead and discuss fanfic in the places they do congregate. As a fan community, we’ve tried to control where fanfic is mentioned for decades with little success: first we objected to it being mentioned on Usenet, then websites, then mailing lists, then LJ, then twitter etc). And I suspect we will continue to try to control who is allowed to discuss or mention our fanfic, where they can discuss it, and how they can discuss it. But to pretend we *can* control where fandom migrates or that we *can* prescribe fandom behavior by waving a moral/ethical/etiquette flag is hubris.
“Most fans would probably love to own a hard copy of a fan publication. If more were exposed to printed fanzines, they might even want to collect them. Many new fans don’t know these publications exist or ever existed, particularly if they have never attended conventions, or their only exposure is to web stories beamed over the Internet. What they are missing is something rare and precious and even personally valuable….like the rudimentary books published in the Middle Ages. How prized those must have been for the new readers….”*
*A fanzine aficionado posting to an online forum in 2005 during one of many debates about whether fanzines would continue to survive as a fannish art form. Read more about this discussion on Fanlore and even more about the history of media fanzines here.