Since Sunfall' asked, I'm gonna try to break down the Fan Words process as best I understand at this point. I know, not the wording you wanna hear from the guy more or less overseeing said-faculty . . . but hey, when your boss live on the extreme opposite side of the continent from you, sometimes these sorts of learning processes take a little time. But that's an excuse, and can be fixed with a little time.
Alright, so here we go!
First, you write a post:
Any "Add Post" made in a theOtaku World can hypothetically become a Fan Word. The theory is, after you write your post, you have those two check-boxes at the bottom of the screen. You have "Shorten To New Page" which is for the sake of how you want your posts to look in the World itself, and you have "Nominate For Publication" which is basically the button for saying "I want this to become a Fan Word!" It's that simple. Heh, maybe almost too simple, seeing how many random blog posts are evidently getting nominated for publication . . . but whatever, those are easy enough to skip through (though I suppose it'd still be worth trying to educate people on that bit).
What Happens With Publication:
If your post gets published, the piece - as it looks in the World it was created - gets added to the "Fan Words" section. It gets front page display and the work itself becomes part of theOtaku.com's official archives of our (hopefully) best writing. Now, if something doesn't get published, people can still see it in the World from which it originated; they just remain as part of that particular user/world's private archives and are not added to the Fan Words archives.
What Kind Of Works Can Become Fan Words?
If you look at the list of "post types" on the posting page, you have our five post types: "Life", "Essay", "Feature", "Fiction", and "Guide". Again, hypothetically any of those could be accepted as Fan Words, though certain types are more likely than others (most of this info comes from the FAQ):
- Life posts are about personal whatevers. These'll rarely get into Fan Words unless they hold some really strong significance that theOtaku's community can really latch onto.
- Essays are your standard "I'm writing to make/argue a point" writings. Absolutely top-notch potential to become Fan Words. Now granted we don't have a "General Anime" category for essays about anime in general - but we'll figure something out for that, I'm sure (I'm thinking posting as "personal" might work right now).
- Features, like essays, have excellent potential to become Fan Words. These can include reports, comedy writing, top ten lists, editorials (unless you'd rather post them under "essay"; your call, at least until I can think about this more).
- Fiction is fiction. 'Nuff said. These can become Fan Words, definitely.
- Guides are specifically in terms of those fact-based things like "Episode guides", "character guides/biographies", "weapon guides", "technique guides", etc. These will rarely be published as Fan Words because there's no sense in having "50 character biographies of Sasuke on our Naruto hub". However, should a hub have a ton of excellent guides, we apparently have the power to publish an entire World. I guess that works.
Miscellaneous Bits:
- Reviews:
At this present time, we will not be publishing too many reviews (which, for the record, would be filed under "Features"). As we've discussed, the site's current setup doesn't really cater to reviews all that well (like, no good section to file them all under and such). So say you do have a review you want to have published? Consider taking a slightly different approach to it, maybe. Say, for example, if you wrote a comparison of "Samurai 7" to the original film, "The Seven Samurai" - I know a lot of reviewers would definitely take that point into account, so that'd be one way to get your reviewish thoughts out. So yeah, in general, flat-out reviews aren't gonna have too much support just yet. - Non-anime Fiction:
The brilliant thing about this post type is that it's called "Fiction" and not just "Fanfiction". So yeah, it's all good, so long that the story itself is of top-notch quality. Only thing I can really add to this would be that original-type stories should be put under the category of "Personal" rather than "Original Anime/Video Games". - "How-To" Guides:
For purposes of this site, these are to be written and posted under the "Features" section. So things like Cassie's "Otaku Survival Guide", Red Tigress' "Intro to WoW", all of these should be classified under "Features" rather than "Guides". We're gonna go by this model now, anyway.
Other Final Bits:
- Re: Writing Quality:
I do have the ability to edit where I see fit, say like for spelling or grammar and stuff. However, I really don't want to have to do more than I should (for one thing, most people probably wouldn't appreciate too many changes to their work, right?). Thus, if errors like that are kept to a minimum I might jump in and clean it off. For the most part, though, if too many little bits start to pile up, I'm gonna put it down to "Keep as Private". - Re: Long-term "Value":
I don't like using the word "value" 'cause that's a bit of a loaded statement. But basically, a work can be perfectly-written with no grammar or spelling errors all the way through - but if it ultimately doesn't say anything especially interesting or thought-provoking, then it won't make it. Conversely, if something is making an excellent point but has errors, then it won't make it either (so hopefully I don't get people thinking I'm trying to "censor" their ideals or anything too often, 'cause that'll never be the case). Also keep in mind that I'm also thinking about fiction when I mention this. The stories are gonna need to stand out to get into Fan Words (and I imagine I'll probably get stricter on this as the section starts to fill up). - Re: Fiction:
There's one thing I'm noticing way too much which is a problem:
All works must be self-contained. We don't publish Fan Words in parts. We have a BREAK tag that allows you to divide multi-part fiction or essays into multiple pages.
I'm seeing "parts" or "chapters" too often. We can't publish those; finish your story first, THEN nominate it for publication. Best ways I can see to get around this would be . . . if it's an ongoing story, write your individual chapters as they come in your Worlds as normal, and then after the story's finished make a new post with the full, complete story. Alternatively, you can maybe try to instead of making one gigantic ongoing thing, to break it up into smaller stories - kinda like how "Lord of the Rings" was basically one big story but broken into 3 novels (technically 6 originally, even). I think this kind of technicality should be okay. I think. - Re: People With Lots of Publications:
Yes, Kastom has a lot of published Fan Words, as does Nehszriah, otaku alchemist, and Neko Nana Mode. I assure everyone, this isn't an issue of favouritism or anything like that; it just happens that with the nature of a brand new section, people have a lot of written work filed away on their computers already. As such, they came online and posted a whole slew of them all at once. Some, like Kastom, had already had those works previously published in the old theOtaku Articles and as such are pretty safe locks for publication; others, like Nehsriah, just happened to have a buttload of old fanfics that were then uploaded all in a row. I know it looks a little quirky right now, yeah, but hopefully once everyone exhausts their old archived stuff, the Fan Words publications won't look quite so . . . I'unno, shifty? Heh, yeahhhh . . . it looks bad, I know. Can't be helped right now.
I've gotta go now, and this is about as much as I can think of re: the Fan Words right now. If there's any questions (other than "Why didn't you approve my submission?!?!"), do ask 'em and we can work from there. Hopefully this helps answer at least a few questions for people.
(Hmm. . . I wonder if I should've put this in my Metropolis blog instead . . . ah, whatever . . .)
