Talk:Fanfiction

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• The Gargoyles Saga - While we would not include any story ideas from this collaborative fanfiction project, I think it was a sufficiently large part of the fandom that it could be mentioned here. We could mention the idea behind it, when it started, how long it lasted, and we could provide a link to the site. -- Supermorff 08:20, 28 April 2008 (CDT)

No. No fanfiction. It does not belong here. ----The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:Greg Bishansky (talk).

Why not? Seriously, explain it to me. Whatever you might think about the stories after so many years, it was a huge part of the fandom for a long time. Bigger, one might argue, than the Disney Adventures comics or even the Marvel Comics, and it lasted longer than either of them as well. I agree that there should be no fanfiction on the wiki (i.e. no stories, no fan-made character bios, no reviews or anything else that might contain an idea invented for the project), but what's wrong with having a single page about the project, explaining the background? Let's open this up for other opinions, if there are any. Supermorff 12:23, 28 April 2008 (CDT)

I was on the TGS staff for years. I was the Head of Edits for about three of those years. Honestly, it does not belong here. If we go in that direction why not give, say, Christine Morgan an entry. I love Christine as a writer and as a person, but I don't think it's appropriate given what this wiki is for. And you add one fanfiction series, you open the flood gates for every fanfiction author out there to add their own sagas. --Greg Bishansky

Greg B makes a valid point, but so does Supermorff. Why not have a single page on Gargoyles fanfiction? Mention no stories, authors or anything like that, just discuss the idea in general. Just a thought. -- Matt 17:35, 28 April 2008 (CDT)

I'm with Greg B on this. I think making a page for any particular fanfiction would open a floodgate that would be very hard to close. In addition to the fact that I don't think it belongs here, we'd have to figure out a very clear and strict set of guidelines to determine what did and didn't merit a page and it would no doubt be hotly debated by people who think their fanfics deserve their own page too. I would be OK with a general "Fanfiction" page in the Apocrypha section with a general discription of fanfiction and a little about "Gargoyles" fanfiction without mentioning any particular stories, series, or authors. Again, though, we'll have to have some guidelines for what's allowed on the page unless we want the article to turn into a long list of links to every "Gargoyles" fanfiction on the web. -- Demonskrye 19:09, 28 April 2008 (CDT)

Actually, I can see a personally useful result of putting up a single general fanfiction page. You could make it clear on the page that I NEVER look at fanfiction. It would help me out, frankly, and accomplish what Supermorff's trying to accomplish. --Gweisman 00:48, 29 April 2008 (CDT)

Yeah, I'm cool with that. At Fanfiction, we think, or something more specific? -- Supermorff 02:53, 29 April 2008 (CDT)

Put the Fanfiction page together this morning. It currently has a basic description and history of fanfiction in general rewritten from Wikipedia, a section on why peple write fanfiction, and Greg W's attitudes and policies regarding Gargoyles fanfiction. It has a surprising amount of internal links. If anyone wants to rework the section on why people write fanfiction - preferably someone who's done more of it than me - feel free. Greg W, I based the section on your opinions of fanfic on some old Ask Greg responses, so feel free to change it to better reflect your thoughts on the subject.

The page is currently completely Greg W safe, meaning "free of any references to specific fanfics or original ideas", and I think we should keep it that way. However, I think we could concievably provide some Gargoyles fanfiction related links. At the least, we can link to libraries of Gargoyles fanfiction, like the Fanfiction Archive at the GFW. We might even be able to link to an individual author's page of fanfiction stories, like Christine Morgn's site, though then we have to decide if we want to put any restrictions on who gets linked to. What I'm wary of is links to individual stories - which would have titles which could be considered ideas - or links that describe the story/stories too much. For example, "Jane Doe's Batman Tales - Stories where Batman wears a tutu and sings Broadway musicals" and "Purple Batman - A story where Batman is purple and he has to find out why" would probably not be permissible links. (They also wouldn't be good stories, since I'm purposefully using really bad Batman ideas as examples to avoid putting anything resembling a Gargoyles idea in here.

Also, could someone make a redirect from Fan Fiction, since I don't know how? -- Demonskrye 09:33, 29 April 2008 (CDT)

I made that redirect. For future reference, it's actually quite easy: you just add the text #redirect, followed by a link to the target page. For example, I added

#redirect [[Fanfiction]]

to the page and it made a redirect.

I'll think a bit about your other comments and maybe reply later. -- Supermorff 10:12, 29 April 2008 (CDT)

Oh, yeah, I should have said: good page! Well done! -- Supermorff 10:19, 29 April 2008 (CDT)

Thanks! Always nice to hear that. -- Demonskrye 10:34, 29 April 2008 (CDT)

I've thought a bit about it, and I have just a couple of comments. First, if we're not sure, we should not include a mention/links. Second, for a story/series/author to be worth mentioning, they have to have had a big and a lasting effect on the fandom. It's that old chestnut from Wikipedia that we call NOTABILITY. Not just notability among Gargoyles fanfic writers, but notability among the fandom in its entirety.

I would also like some sentence pointing out that one of the big contributing factors to fanfiction about Gargoyles in particular was the dissatisfaction with TGC and the snippits of his Master Plan that Greg had revealed at Ask Greg. I think that's pretty central to the topic. That's all for now. -- Supermorff 06:36, 30 April 2008 (CDT)