Below are the 12 most recent journal entries recorded in purplepopple's InsaneJournal:

Thursday, July 3rd, 2008
7:06 pm	Fan History: Translation help requested One of the things I'd really like to do with Fan History is have it equipped a bit better to deal with non-English speaking communities. The decision has been made to put that in the main wiki, rather than in separate, language based wikis. One of the areas where this is probably most needed at the moment is in regards to people. When we created FanFictonNetBot, it got information for every user on FanFiction.Net who had published. A number of these authors were not writing in English. We've had a few of those users, mostly in the Spanish language and Finnish language communities, link to articles about themselves. In the case of the Spanish speakers, a few have come in and done Spanish translations on their pages. On Fan History, we've also had a German fansite or two post information about their site in German. Given all that, I'd really like to have the person template translated into as many languages as possible. I know that there is are people on my FList who speak Greek, Russian, German, Spanish, Japanese and possible a few other languages. If you could translate it, I would be very appreciative. :) I've put the bit I would love to see translated behind the cut. The =marks= are used for identifying section headers so I know how to use the template and can identify sections. [[double brackets]] don't need to be translated. [Single] does with the language the text is in. (these) are alternative words for phrases I think might be hard to translate. Again, any assistance would be very much appreciated. :) ( Bit to be translated ) (Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 1st, 2008
10:13 am	Fan History downtime Fan History is experiencing intermittent downtime today. Updates on the server status can be found on my twitter account. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 25th, 2008
9:14 pm	Twilight fandom Twilight fandom is mad insane. Relatively new fandom that is quickly becoming the most popular fandom on FanFiction.Net. Only eight fandoms on FanFiction.Net have more people who have written in them: Harry Potter, Naruto, Inuyasha, Lord of the Rings, Yu-Gi-Oh, Kingdom Hearts, Gundam Wing, and Dragon Ball Z. Since December 27, 2007, the fandom has added 14,506 stories. The first story wasn't added until November 28, 2005, seven years after FanFiction.Net was created. The size and growth of the fandom just boggles. Since mid-May, over 250 new authors have joined FanFiction.Net to publish Twilight fan fiction. That's roughly one in eight out of every new active author on the site publishing Twilight fan fiction. And it isn't just FanFiction.Net that is experiencing massive growth for this fandom. FanLib is too. There were 33 stories on FanLib as of the same date. Now, the category has 637 stories. FanPop has also experienced growth in that same period. It went from 265 fans to 1,662 fans. That's some seriously mad growth. If I was a marketer looking for a large group of passionate fans in fandom, that would be the group I'd be going after as it has the potential to look like Harry Potter with its explosive growth. Momentum should stay with the fandom at least until a good six months after the movie comes out. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 24th, 2008
6:16 pm	How a fandom organization could serve fandom and those fandom fans Fans and those they fan over frequently have competing interests. This can and does inevitably set the two parties up for conflict. Unlike objects of fannish adoration, fans aren't unified; there is no group which has networked in fandom, which has worked with fans to organize them. There is no fan group which has stepped up, explained the position of the fans, explained the position of those they fan and offered to mediate the disputes that have happened. Such an organization, one which had respect and support from both parties could prove to be beneficial for business operating in fan space and for fans themselves as it would allow both parties a good platform for their positions with the idea of creating a more open environment where more effective communication can take place. Similar organizations and efforts have been made in other spaces. The most notable of these probably is UStream facilitating a town hall event for Digg users. In the past year and a half, a number of fan conflicts with those they fan have happened. As an outsider with occasional insider knowledge, both sides have their strong points, valid concerns that get lost in the struggle that both sides go through. The struggle can hurt those who are fanned and fans. Below is my list of conflicts where such an organization could have done the most good for everyone one involved. They are in no particular order. Quizilla: Quizilla is a blogging, social networking community owned by Viacom, run by Nickelodeon's The N Network. There is a large fan fiction community on the site, thanks to the ability to add stories. The Quizilla incident occurred in early 2008. Quizilla announced that they were removing the ratings system on the site, as adult content was in violation of the Terms of Service so the rating system for such content wasn't necessary. Quizilla also said they would enforce the rules against posting content featuring death. Many of the users were upset about this as they felt these restrictions, along with losing the ability to customize their profiles, were an affront to their creativity. LiveJournal: LiveJournal is a blogging service and social network. The site has had a number of run ins with fandom in the past year and a half over such issues as what content is allowable on the network, how the abuse team handles fandom related situations, advertisement placement and privacy concerns. FanLib: FanLib is a service which hosts fan fiction, video, and fan art. It also hosts contests for intellectual property holders. Fans were upset over the commercial nature of the project and how the site first engaged fandom on various message boards and LiveJournal. Wikia: Wikia is a wiki host and wiki community. They provide, free of charge, tools for people running wikis to help grow the content of the wiki. In June 2008, Wikia announced that they would be putting advertisements in the content area of some wiki articles on the service. Users were upset because of the lack of notice, how they felt the ads were implemented, the types of ads appearing in their wiki and the disruption to the formatting of articles.here was some talk of the major wikis moving. They list of fandom wikis which were supposed to have contemplated moving included Wookieepedia, Creatures Wiki, and MemoryAlpha. The Police: The Police are a band with a fan club. During 2008, fans were upset with the fan club because they were expecting members to sign up at the same rate for the previous year ($100) without any information about what the club would do for them in 2008 as the tour dates had already been announced, being told concerts were the final concerts only to find several additional shows added to the tour, having good seats for the final show swapped out for bad ones without notifying buyers, asking for members to submit pictures from the tour for a DVD the fanclub would sell with out offering compensation, such as giving contributors a free DVD. TokyoPop: TokyoPop is a manga distributor. In May 2008, some fans were upset over the Manga Pilot program. They felt that the contract involved with the program was not fair and took unfair advantage of contributors. Related Fan History articles: Quizilla, LiveJournal, FanLib, Wikia, Creatures Wiki, ThePolice.com, Tokyopop (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, June 16th, 2008
6:34 pm	Fan History update The above image was by emufarmers, Fan History's new official tech support guy. With out him, Fan History would be screwed. He's been busy, hard at work fixing the site. What has he accomplished? What is the state of Fan History? Error free. Both of us have poked around the site. Any errors we've found have been fixed. (And if you find any, let me know.) Moved to a dedicated server. eAccelerator installed to make the site faster. The database has been improved. This all means much less downtime. We've experienced almost no downtime since those changes have been made. Search is up and search works. Example search. Search is now powered by sphnix, instead of MediaWiki's own search engine. Don't want to sign up for a Fan History account? Login with OpenID. This means you can edit with your InsaneJournal, LiveJournal or other account. Picture upload works. You can go back to uploading images, charts and whatever else you need. We've finished playing around with FanFictionNetBot. It stopped running with accounts that were created in May 2008. Thanks to Josh, the bot helped create over 460,000 articles. All of this is fantastic news. It means Fan History is primed to continue to grow. :) Please spread the news. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
12:42 pm	This article on Plagiarism Today is an interesting little bit on how video embedding has reduced the amount of video plagiarism. :) Fascinating little read. (Comment on this)
Saturday, March 15th, 2008
3:03 pm	Wander over and leave a comment on my submission regarding one starring fan fiction, and behavioral patterns regarding that. :) Please? (Comment on this)
Thursday, January 31st, 2008
10:03 am	Fan History Updates We've got a table for MediaWest we think! (We've paid and we're registered early so hopefully that is all a go. If we don't get a table, we'll try to get a panel or two.) Much thanks to sysop, sidewinder for helping us get registered for that. In preparation for MediaWest, Fan History Press has been loosely organized. We're going to shoot for convention packs for people doing panels to distribute. We're also shooting for completing one or two book/zines which will have compilations of people's experiences in bandom and possibly the CSI fandom. Because of MediaWest expenses, our funding page was updated. It now includes spending details regarding MediaWest, and information on advertising. We're still working on a press release. Two sysops are editing it before we release that. We're shooting to have that out by March. Getting it out earlier was delayed because of talks with Wikia. In order to provide more accurate analytic data, Fan History has become a Quantcast Quantified Publisher. The numbers being generated by Compete and Alexa are not reliable. The data being generated by Google Analytics is not public, and doesn't match up with our internal numbers. We've found that Quantcast is the most reliable service, outside of our internals, for providing reliable analytic data. Fan History has continued its outreach and working on our to do list. Information on both can be found here. Fan History is working on creating sponsored partnerships with other sites in order to help gain additional visibility in fandom and to help offset costs for planned projects. In addition to our special relationship with FanWorks.Org and FanWorksFinder.Com, we now have a special relationship with policefans.org. We hope to create more relationships like this in the future. Thank you to everyone who continued to help Fan History thrive. Your support and contributions are appreciated! (Comment on this)
Thursday, January 17th, 2008
12:40 pm	Fandom History and OTW Everyone has bias. The best method that I've found of dealing with it is to admit it up front so people are properly informed so they can make their own judgment: I have problems with OTW, especially as it pertains to their retelling of fandom history. I've been involved in trying to tell the history of fan fiction communities and fandom since 2000. My theoretical background is based on education, with some communications, sociology and history theoretical frameworks added to the mix. I am not grounded in any sort of feminist background academically and find it really doesn't interest me. I define fandom internally, based on how I see fandom defining itself. I love fan fiction. I love fandom. I love fandom history. Fan History is my expression of that love and one that a number of others share in the same place. With that out of the way, time for the major part: The Organization for Transformative Works is basing some of their claims and plans on the history of fannish works: "We value our identity as a predominantly female community with a rich history of creativity and commentary." Putting aside the issue of the gender exclusionary language for the moment (as that has been covered repeatly), let us focus on "predominantly female community with a rich history" and go back to their mission statement which states: "We preserve our fannish economy, values, and creative expression by protecting and nurturing our fellow fans, our work, our commentary, our history, and our identity while providing the broadest possible access to fannish activity for all fans." OTW is defining the history of fannish works as predominantly female. What does this mean? It is rather unclear at this time. OTW is still not sure what they mean which makes this even difficult. In reading their comments of the people affiliated with this organization, we can speculate as to the idealogical grounding for what will emerge: They see fandom coming into existence with Star Trek and starting with television and movie slash fanzines that gained popularity during the 1970s. This fits in the view of fandom that Kristina Busse, one of the major forces behind OTW's academic journal, has historically held in her comments where you're not a legitimate part of fandom unless you can trace your roots back to Kirk/Spock and failure to connect to that particular tradition means you're feral. franzeska elevates personal experiences of her and others with the organization as a history representative of everyone else. When confronted with different histories or histories that do not match her own, she appears dismissive to me, saying "but it has not been my experience at all." This dismissal, as franzeska and defining based not on research and fact, as kelly-holden did, but on what they want to believe, should be troublesome if you are looking for an objective view of fandom history that accurately reflects the history of our community. It elevates the personal experiences of a few select people to that and dangerously conflates these limited experiences to that of a whole population with out giving a rational for why the experiences of the chosen accurately reflect what is going on. (This problem is not helped by OTW not defining terms so that those who criticize them and those who support them can have a shared vocabulary from which to offer a critique.) This practice of elevating personal experiences of a few while rejecting contrary personal experiences and scholarship which counters those experience is exclusionary in the extreme. One of their people high up in their organization, franzeska, has invalidated the fannish experiences of those in bandom, sports fandom, anime, cartoons and comics. It says that while the Organization for Transformative Works may make noises about not being exclusionary, their methodology and conceptual framework which provide the support structure for the organization, say differently: Bandom which does not share its roots with media fandom slash fanzines dating to the 1970s need not apply. Sports fandom need not apply. Transformative works which do not connect to slash fandom need not apply. The Organization for Transformative Works has provided no history on their website to support their claims but what we can of infer how they understand history by what their major academics representatives and their board says. These members frequently couch their views on the history with qualified like "as I know it" or "this is my belief". The problem is that they are is frequently wrong. Fannish works predate the 1970s. They did not all grow out from the same cultural shared heritage. They were not all tied in to English speaking, Anglo-centric fandom. The concept of fandom predates Star Trek and Harry Potter was not the second biggest most influential fandom after Star Trek. Being wrong, failing to do basic research, engaging in historical revisionism, approaching our history with an agenda or a preconceived notion on how fannish communities engaged in creation fanworks, that serves the good of a few is not the world's smartest move. It undermines the credibility of the organization, of the individuals involved in this project and fandom. Trust me: Been there, done that, tried to learn from my mistakes and moved on... but being wrong has cost me. And it will cost the Organization for Transformative Works. Now, what about fandom history? The term fandom dates back to 1896 and was in reference to baseball fans. The term was used a number of times in magazines and newspapers during the next 40 years to describe groups of sports fans, radio and movie fans. The term didn't begin to get used in relation to science fiction until after it was was first applied to sports. There were separate fan fiction/fannish works communities, operating in isolation from each other. This included professional wrestling fandom, which was dominated by women. Fiske, John. Researching Historical Broadcast Audiences: Female Fandom of Professional Wrestling, 1945-1960. Diss. Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 1997. 5 Apr. 2006. is well worth reading to learn more about that. It predates the whole slash zines of the 1970s. BandFic was being written and published in magazines like 16 during the 1960s and 1970s. The forces of the media encouraged this and teenage girls would send in their heterosexual, non-sexual stories for various contests and to be published. Some of the girls who disliked this wrote their own homoerotic stories in response that they shared amongst themselves. Comics fan fiction, which at times was in comic strip form rather than prose narrative, were operating during the 1970s and their were organized fan fiction contests. The Sherlock Holmes community had been actively engaging in pastiche, a form of fan fiction which operated on the fringes of legitimacy, since at least the 1930s and much of the membership was male. Anime fandom first started in Japan, with a Japanese speaking fan base. It was only later that Anime came to the attention of the Anglo audience, and by that time some of the terminology and cultural practices of Japanese fans were used by their English speaking cousins in fandom. The USSR and its satellites had their fandoms, existing behind the iron curtain. As their contact with western fandoms was limited, they developed their own cultural practices which still show differences from English fandoms even today. During the 1970s, slash fanzines might have become dominant, published by a lot of and defining for a core audience but that absents a number of other things going on in communities that were connected to that community. Most of the fanzines that were coming out of fandoms of that era, which includes Doctor Who, Blake's 7, Star Trek, Star Wars, Dark Shadows to name a few, were not all about slash. There were a lot of fanzines which were newsletters, letterzines, reviewzines, gen fanfic, het fanfic, and more. The partial and incomplete list of Blake's 7 and Star Trek fanzines only hint at this. A number of these non-slash and non-fic oriented zines were created by men. If we're revisiting slash, according to Mary Morris on FCA-L, men were writing Blake's 7 femslash with female pen names, which had its roots in women fan readers' views that men were unable to write female perspectives well. If a female pen name was used, the zine was much more likely to sell and the story was more likely to be read. This means that, if we're looking at history and trying to do historical ethnography work on female participation in fandom, names alone are not good enough to establish gender participation. What communities were big and influential is a sticky, loaded question. Saying Harry Potter and Star Trek is overly simplistic. Yes, a lot of terms and practices came out of the Star Trek fandom. Yes, the Harry Potter fandom is huge and huger than most fandom. The question is how many of these Harry Potter fans are migrating to other fandoms? How influential are they in their new communities? Do their new communities already have existing cultural practices and norms? At some point soon, looking at FanFiction.Net, FanLib, MediaMiner.Org, AdultFanFiction.Net, Quizilla, anime will over take Harry Potter in terms of sheer production, helped along by their long history, their history of Anime conventions, the ready available new fan texts available in book and animated form. A lot of the big television fandoms, book fandoms, movie fandoms, those large and influential fandom communities are not necessarily influential when it comes to other groups like Anime. Sailor Moon, Digimon, Pokemon, Transformers, Gundam were all influential in Anime. That doesn't necessarily translate outside of that population. X-Files was hugely influential in the formation of current fandom. A lot of archiving practices, in media fandom, came out of it... and X-Files is the fandom that gave us FanFiction.Net. Good Charlotte, AFI and Mest were influential in ebandom but that didn't necessarily translate into being influential in rock based fanfic fandoms. Led Zeppelin and Duran Duran were comparatively large pre-net BandFic communities. They influenced some smaller bandom communities during the 1980s and 1990s. Unless you're grounded in the history, you're not going to know that. Unless you place some value in bandom as its own separate thing, you might not agree or see that. Star Wars was highly influential in some ways for being a reaction AGAINST what some saw as the overabundance of adult and slash material in the Star Trek fandom. On micro and macro levels, depending on your self ideation as a fan, your general knowledge of fandom, where you are and where you participated, the ability to see or agree with any statements regarding influence is just going to change which fandom you see as influential and large. If you're interested in more history of fandom, check out Fan History and feel free to lend your voice in sharing our history. The more data we have, the more personal experiences we can integrate in, the more people we have fact checking, the better and more complete our own history will be. Crossposted to my Quizilla account. (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, December 24th, 2007
12:33 pm	partly_bouncy and Fan History's 2007 fandom year in review: January to June partly_bouncy and Fan History's 2007 fandom year in review: January to June Before we go on, I would like to thank the many people who contributed to Fan History Wiki this year. Your contributions have helped make this year's year in review more thorough than the one I did last year. Parts of this are taken directly, word for word, from those contributions and this should be seen more as an extension of the 2007 entry on Fan History Wiki than as an original piece of meta. If your fandom is not included or details that you think matter are not here, please edit the appropriate entry on Fandom Wiki so that your history will be told! Because this history is over 70k as a text file, the events in 2007 involving FanLib, StrikeThrough/Boldthrough and the Organization for Transformative Works have been removed from this review. Please see the information on fandom wiki for more information. January February March April May June ( partly_bouncy and Fan History's 2007 fandom year in review: January to June ) (Comment on this)
12:32 pm	partly_bouncy and Fan History's 2007 fandom year in review: July to December partly_bouncy and Fan History's 2007 fandom year in review: July to December Before we go on, I would like to thank the many people who contributed to Fan History Wiki this year. Your contributions have helped make this year's year in review more thorough than the one I did last year. Parts of this are taken directly, word for word, from those contributions and this should be seen more as an extension of the 2007 entry on Fan History Wiki than as an original piece of meta. If your fandom is not included or details that you think matter are not here, please edit the appropriate entry on Fandom Wiki so that your history will be told! Because this history is over 70k as a text file, the events in 2007 involving FanLib, StrikeThrough/Boldthrough and the Organization for Transformative Works have been removed from this review. Please see the information on fandom wiki for more information. July August September October November December ( partly_bouncy and Fan History's 2007 fandom year in review: July to December ) (Comment on this)
Monday, October 1st, 2007
7:54 am	Leave me a message on InsaneJournal If you need to get a hold of me and I'm not responding elsewhere, please leave a message here. :) (Comment on this)