Create Anime and Manga et al Metadata

[branchandroot]

So, Fanlore (which is in no way synonymous with the Fandom History fiasco, despite the efforts of the FH creator/troll) is looking for knowledgeable people to talk about that eternal question:

What do we call this stuff?

I find myself torn, really. I mean, a big part of me says "this should be simple, Categories are like tags, so you create as many Categories as there are Kinds Of Stuff and slap all that are applicable on any given wiki page".

Another part of me says "but that will make the Category structure really unwieldy and hard to navigate!"

One thing I'm sure of is that I do not think Anime should be merged into Cartoons, nor Manga into Comics. The latter are names for specifically Western art forms, and using them for non-Western forms would, in my eyes, be a nasty sort of erasure, given the cultural history involved.

Kind of like using Manga as the Category for something that's really manhwa. Given the cultural history involved.

And so I come back to "a Category for everything". Actually, I'm not at all sure that's a problem. I don't think it would be that unwieldy, in the end. And trying to limit the Categories implicitly assumes that the world is only as big as X number of categories. Which is just plain wrong.

So, what do you think? What Categories do we need?

Comments

[ticktocktober]

Are subcategories out of the question? Comics, manga, manwha all under 'Graphic Novels' or somesuch? Seems like a reasonable solution, unless the wiki isn't equipped to function that way.

[annotated_em]

I lean towards Categories For Everything, myself. If necessary, I think subsuming everything under Graphics and Animation--so that "comics" and "manga" and "manhwa" are weighted equally--would be an acceptable compromise.

But yeah, I strenuously resist the idea of just subsuming things under the heading of "comics" for some reason.