Subject: Keeping things organized helps though
Author:
Posted on: 2010-07-21 06:27:00 UTC
It's easier to organize missions if we have things listed by genre, and it's not so fragmented. The divisions of the sub-departments would be not much more than structures meant to make bookkeeping easier, for the PPC and for us.
I was looking through the DMS section of the list, and there are quite a few Divisions that only have one or two missions, a lot of them are for pretty rare fandoms. I had the idea that some consolidation might make sense to make the page look neater. I'm looking specifically at:
Group 1: Labyrinth, Legacy of Kain, Pride and Prejudice, Sci-fi/Steampunk, Shadowlands, Tamora Pierce, Troy, and Valdemar/Mercedes Lackey. About half of the links are broken in this group.
* What would the general opinions be of possibly moving missions from this first group to the Sub-Department of Rare Fandoms?
* We could maintain their identity by making them Divisions of the Sub-Department. That might work well for most of the items in the next group as well. Something could remain a division of rare fandoms until it reached a significant number of missions. Maybe five? Then be made its own division. This would cover agents like Tasmin and Allison, remaining in the Sub-Department, because they take on all sorts of rare fandoms, whereas these other agents only take whatever they are labeled as.
Group 2: Bleach, The Matrix, Narnia, Phantom of the Opera, Wheel of Time, and X-Men. This group seems to be more popular/common in terms of quantity of fanfic or with current Boarders, or they still have active agents and might therefore grow. I'm just pointing out that they also have a lot of broken links and not very many missions listed. Bleach and Full Metal Alchemist (which does have more than five missions) could both go in as sub-divisions under Anime/Manga.
* Basically, I am wondering if we could limit the Divisions to things that have a large quantity of fanfic, or more than one or two pairs of agents, or more than five missions. I kind of like the idea of sub-divisions in such a large department as DMS. It looks all organized and professional and stuff. ;)
--Two more things--
1. While speaking of divisions, the All-Purpose Department is pretty much all about being divided up by what continuum the agents work, would it be okay to actually label them? I think Echo Kazul and Kat Daydream worked Star Wars, and Brightbeard and Barid are in Warcraft? I admit to mostly selfish reasons for asking this, as I am about to move Kelok and Unger to the Sherlock Holmes division of the All-Purpose Department.
2. Black Jewels is a quarantined continuum now. What would you all think about relabeling it to something like "Historical reports from now Quarantined continua" or something like that, just so it is obvious that we only have that mission listed because it was okay when it was written, and if any other missions are found that fall in that category, we could group them all together.
I'm starting this again up here, because the bottom is getting way over on the right of the page.
Things that seem to be agreed on so far, as I understand them.
1. We should label the divisions of the All Purpose Department.
2. We should change the label somewhat for the missions that deal with a now quarantined continuum, but there doesn't seem to be a general consensus on the exact form of this renaming.
3. None of these changes will affect the in-canon structure of the PPC.
4. We do want to consolidate the wiki list somewhat.
4a. There is no general consensus on the form this consolidation should take.
We could reduce the large number of categories on the list if we had headings like this--
DMS Divisions (Fantasy)
Agents Joe and John (Mossflower) (3)
Agents Alice and Bob (Narnia) (2)
Agents Zoe and Wilbur (Wheel of Time) (1)
So the DMS would be divided into divisions as usual (no changes there), and then on the complete list everything would be actually listed by genre, with the specific continuum in parentheses after the agents' names and just before their mission number.
I really like that. Nothing is changed internally, but the page looks much neater. It also helps label things that I am not familiar with. Before I tried looking up the numbers on ffnet, I had no idea that Legacy of Kain was a video game. I thought it was going to have to do with that old kung fu tv show from the 70's.
There are things (real world settings like CSI, NCIS, others) that I can see not fitting into any of those categories, but so far, no one has specialized in them.
I vote that we go with what you have in the sandbox for the real page.
Sandbox
So the divisions are grouped up now, but there's no change to the DMS's organization.
1 - Alphabetize. If we're going for more organization, you can't go wrong with alphabetizing.
2 - I contest the inclusion of the Phantom of the Opera in rare fandoms. We may not have too many people willing to brave the cesspit that is PotO badfic, but it IS a wildly popular and mainstream book/musical/movie/franchise thing.
2.5 - If fandoms crop up that don't quite fit elsewhere, a "general fiction" category might suffice. I'm not sure if PotO quite counts as fantasy, so maybe it could be the first member of that category.
3 - Make a really clear note that lets people know that these categories aren't actual divisions. Unless, like Sci-fi/Steampunk, they are. And that'll need a note, too.
Also... it occurs to me that there's a whole page for the divisions of the DMS apart from the Complete List. Is that going to get the same treatment vis-a-vis categories?
~Neshomeh
Putting the Complete List page into a more concise format is for the sake of people looking for spinoffs. The DMS division list I think should stay the same because it's about the divisions themselves, rather than about listing missions.
Phantom of the Opera is in Rare Fandoms because it doesn't have a huge number of fics written about it. FF.net has only 174; so while the musical itself is a pretty big deal, the fan fiction isn't.
I guess it depends on the definition of Rare Fandoms. Is it that it's a rare fandom when nobody knows about it; or is it a rare fandom when there's not a lot of fan fiction about it?
I am going to alphabetize my edited version and substitute it in the complete list; it can always be reverted back if it's discovered people don't like it.
It is listed under three different sections. Altogether, it is almost 10,000 fanfics.
Phantom of the Opera-9379 (books) 449 (movies) 174 (plays)
Just Google "Phantom of the Opera fanfic" and see what I mean. There's a lot of fic (and a fair bit of people bitching about fic).
But anyhow, I believe the original definition of rare fandoms were those that aren't wildly popular, or at least don't fall into the mainstream like HP, PotC, LotR, and other acronyms. I maintain that PotO is mainstream and wildly popular, therefore not rare.
~Neshomeh
Does that work or should they be separated?
Barid and Brightbeard are in the Warcraft Division of the All-Purpose Department. I also think that they should be labeled, if everything else is divided on the list then ADP should be as well.
Consolidation would be a good idea, if only to keep the list read-able. The thing is, in my mind, that we've got two ways to officially divide everything: The way we percieve it here in the real world, and the way that things work within the Word World. Just because we Boarders don't write a lot in one department doesn't mean that it'd be a snall department within the PPC, so I'm wary of lumping a number of fandoms together under an official label and acting like it would be normal in HQ. Then again, there's nothing to say it wouldn't be. I'm just careful.
In response to your other questions:
1. Sure, why not? If we can have a hundred little subdivisions in one area, why not another? Besides, it's easier to say that an agent "belongs to the Sherlock Holmes division of the All-Purpose Department" than to say that they "belong to the All-Purpose Department but specialise in/only take on missions from the Sherlock Holmes continuum". It means the same thing anyway, an if there's one thing to be said about the PPC, it's that we don't fuss about giving things fancy names. The shortest and simplest will do.
2. I don't see why not; that sounds like the most tactful solution for everybody. :)
I completely understand what your saying about it being different between how HQ sees it and how we see it. I kind of got lost in that long post, and forgot part of my point, but I think I was aiming in that direction with dividing those up into two groups. The second group includes things that I think (anyone can argue for or against any of these) might be more popular in HQ regardless of our mission count.
Maybe some of them would be better consolidated into a "Rare Literature Fandoms" Division?
I think it was their fifth mission when Tasmin said that in A-Team division they did everything.
That's a little beside the point.
Point would be that number of missions written shouldn't be the measure of whether something should be in the sub-department of Rare Fandoms, because there have been more missions into A-Team than into Doctor Who or Torchwood, and the former is sub-department of Rare Fandoms, and the other two aren't. It should be a consideration of the number of badfic (absolute or relative to the number of fic in the fandom) that makes the fandom rare.
You've done the most Rare Fandoms missions.
I mean, there've been some truly obscure ones (I recall one mission to "Flatland"... DOGA, of course).
In-world, the PPC probably handles a lot of things that the Boarders wouldn't like writing about--Twilight comes to mind; there should logically be a DMS Twilight Division, with the sheer number of fics, because a continuum's a continuum. But we don't write about it very often because... well, who wants to actually PPC fics in a world where it'd be NSFB to research enough to critique the badfic?
So if you're okay with rare fandoms being grouped, then I say let's do it, and let the groupings reflect mostly the popularity and volume of badfic in the fandoms.
My suggested arrangement would be to group by genre, and then have subdivisions in the DMS:Rare Fandoms.
Continua with their own DMS divisions:
DMS:LotR
DMS:Harry Potter
DMS:PotC
DMS:X-Men
Divisions by Genre:
DMS:Anime/Manga
--Anime Division
--Bleach
--Full Metal Alchemist
DMS:Fantasy
--His Dark Materials
--Jossverse/Buffyverse
--Labyrinth
--Mossflower
--Narnia
--Valdemar
--Wheel of Time
DMS:Sci-fi/Steampunk:
--Sci-Fi/Steampunk
--Doctor Who/Torchwood
--The Matrix
DMS:Video Gaming:
--Video Gaming Division
--Golden Sun
--Legacy of Kain
DMS:Rare Fandoms:
--Phantom of the Opera
--Pride and Prejudice
--Shadowlands
--Tortall (Tamora Pierce)
--Troy
Miscellaneous DMS Divisions:
--Multiple Offenses
--Freelance
Defunct DMS Divisions:
--Black Jewels
The problem I see here is one of practicality. Not all - few, in fact - agents are going to be knowledgeable about all those continua. For example, I (and therefore any agents I write) am familiar with Narnia, The Matrix, Phantom of the Opera and Pride and Prejudice (and others, but sticking to what's on your list for now). They can't simply be placed in any of the below divsions because they just don't know all the fandoms. They have to be restricted to continua they know. I don't think there's any way to class fandoms in such a way as to ensure that every agent who knows one of them will know all.
We have an Anime division; and that's an absolutely huge category.
I've only read one mission in which neither agent was familiar with the fandom (a DOA mission to Fullmetal Alchemist). It makes sense to assume that Upstairs catalogs all the agents' known fandoms--they catalog lust objects; quite probably this is done at the same time--and assigns missions to teams where one or both agents know the fandom. It's probably in the computer system somewhere. (The Agent wiki template also includes a Fandoms entry; we in the Real World keep track of them too.)
After all, Floaters, DMS-Freelance, and DBS-Freelance agents can't possibly know every continuum out there; and yet they could technically be given everything from Shakespeare to Teletubbies.
Putting agents into departments based on their favorite genres makes sense: If you're going into Star Wars and you've got to have a partner who doesn't know the canon, would you want someone who knows Star Trek and Animorphs, or someone who's only got experience in Sherlock Holmes and Pride and Prejudice? Group 'em by genre, and the agent who doesn't know the canon is more likely to actually be useful.
Agents with eclectic lists are probably going to be assigned to Floaters/Freelance. And agents who only know one canon (badfic recruits, especially) tend to get put wherever there are manpower shortages. And there are exceptions to every rule; this is HQ after all... But in general, I'd think that if you wanted to execute Sues, grouping by genre makes more sense because you'd know the rules of plot in that genre even if you didn't know the particular canon...
But I think that because, as you say, the computer system keeps track of who can do what, there wouldn't therefore be any real reason to make a lot of subdivisions; my agents are in DMS Freelance and I'm quite happy to leave it that way.
It's easier to organize missions if we have things listed by genre, and it's not so fragmented. The divisions of the sub-departments would be not much more than structures meant to make bookkeeping easier, for the PPC and for us.
It's traditional, we're used to it, not everything needs to be happily organised or make sense.
It's one of the running jokes about the PPC, that it IS woefully organised.
Where if it is yours, Do. If it is not yours, leave it to those whose it is to Do.
Since Doing where it is not Yours To Do makes people who are there tetchy because they would've liked to Do It Themselves And Not Have The Rug Pulled Out From Under Them.
I see what you mean, Calista, but if the main issue here is keeping track of missions, then I don't see why we need to make changes to the internal PPC structure; lists can be kept any way you like, without changing what our agents call themselves.
And besides, I like July's point - the PPC will be organised the day that the Flowers spontaneously give us all a raise ;p
Organizing the wiki list would still be very useful.
It's basically DMS divisions grouped by genre to make the Complete List neater. No actual PPC reorganization is involved.
I'd like some feedback on whether this is what we're looking for to reduce the DMS sprawl on the list page.
Sandbox
If it works for you guys I'll switch what I've got in the Sandbox for the actual complete list page.
The Wikipedia article has a list of how many fics ff.net has on the 25 most popular fandoms. Most of these probably have their own DMS and DBS divisions at HQ. (I would not want to wander into the Twilight division, though. *shudder*)
The Anime division is probably the busiest department at HQ right now, looking at the numbers, closely followed by Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Video Games.
But if it's not on that list, and doesn't have a lot of published fics in the fandom, then putting it in the Rare Fandoms division makes sense to me.
How about Rare Fandoms: TV/Movies, and Rare Fandoms: Literature divisions? (Graphic novels would go under Literature, and multiple-format fandoms would go under their most common format--Buffy goes under TV despite that there are Buffy novels.)
Group 1: Labyrinth-6001 (movies)
Legacy of Kain-1120 (videogames)
Pride and Prejudice-1359 (books)
Sci-fi/Steampunk-would cover multiple fandoms, but still probably a very low count
Shadowlands-0
Tamora Pierce-no section labeled as such, and I'm too lazy to track down each of her books.
Troy-877 (movies)
Valdemar/Mercedes Lackey-1017 (books)
Group 2: Bleach-43,464 (anime)(obviously I am out of touch with the popularity of anime fandoms, since this is in the top 25. I knew a lot of Boarders liked it, but I had no idea it was that popular!
The Matrix-3117 (movies)
Narnia-6670 (books)
Phantom of the Opera-9379 (books) 449 (movies) 174 (plays)
Wheel of Time-1030 (books)
X-Men-10,961 (movies) 9,762 (comics)
So aside from Bleach, only Narnia, Labyrinth, Phantom of the Opera, and X-Men are over 5,000 fics on FFnet. With only X-Men making it over 10,000.
Each of us pretty well knows our own fandoms and it would not be hard to take a peek at the total count when we look up a fic. Maybe the criteria could be based on 10,000 plus fics?
I know I saw once a Top 50 list for ffnet, but I have been looking for it and can't find it. The top 25 takes it down to barely above 20,000 (which number between comics and movies, X-Men is above).
I'm just throwing out suggestions for discussion.
Listed under the sub-Department of Rare fandoms are missions in the following fandoms, plus the number of fics on FFnet:
A-Team == 821, but about 1867 on another archive. Many stories are on both.
MacGyver == 264, half of which are drables by one person or one Sue by another person
MASH == 2158
Hogan's Heroes == 932
NCIS == 19933 (so not rare; I got involved in this fandom because someone asked me)
Stargate Atlantis == 16043 (same)
And one Star Trek fic. (I believe the now broken link also lead to at least one Star Trek fic).
Now that we've got a Wiki it's no longer necessary to list explicitly by fandom, because people can just go to the Wiki page for the continuum.
Maybe we should make a note of that fact if we do change the DMS's organization.