I currently never use the categories because they are too big and disorganised to be useful. However I would probably use them to browse more if they were easier to navigate.
Currently, to find a fandom I put it in the search box, page down until I find a work that has it as a tag (unfortunately the search is not very accurate and never seems to show the most exact matches first, so often I have to try again with slightly different phrasing) and then click on that.
A couple of my fandoms would probably be in the top 5 fandoms in their cats, so that would be an easier way to find them, if not for the sodding giant metafandoms edging them out. I am very strongly in favour of metafandoms being listed separately because they are very confusing and annoying and I do not recall an occasion where I found them useful, as a reader.
I am in favour of subcategories. Lemme say that again. SUBCATEGORIES PLEASE. ALL OF THE SUBCATEGORIES. I don't care that much what you call them, I know there will be bitching and complaining no matter what they are named or how they are arranged, but *almost any arrangement of subcats would be better than the categories as they stand*. They are too big and will only get bigger. You cannot divide all the fandoms in the world into only ten groups, please stop trying, please can we have subcategories, *please*. Someone sometime seems to have got a bug in their head about not adding extra clicks to find things: go ahead and add the extra clicks okay! because currently it is not possible to find *anything*!
Additionally, add the top level cats, whatever they called, to the front page.
I know many people have very strong feelings about the anime and manga cat, both for and against. I do see the appeal of separate Animation and Sequential Art (or whatever you call them) categories (as long as they have SUBCATEGORIES) - although I recognise that makes it awkward when so many animanga fandoms build off both the anime and manga. I would not necessarily argue if you chose instead to rename the current cat to Anime/Manga/Manwha/Manhua etc or something (again, as long as it had SUBCATEGORIES) as that is where many people would expect to find their fandoms, but something definitely has to change. It's not acceptable to throw them all under Animanga like there's no difference between one Asian tradition and the next. The cat names might end up long and ugly looking but I think you really need to worry more about accuracy and usefulness than tidiness. There is just not going to be a tidy answer to this problem, some fandoms are always going to be weird and won't fit neatly into a category, some category names are probably going to be long and unwieldly in order to be accurate, etc, what is important is that the categories are useful for actually finding things.
I do not read RPF so I have no opinions on how best to organise it, except to say that I'm glad it's not my job and I wish you luck.
Books - this is the category I would most like to browse but it is unuseable and also it fills me with rage just to look at it so I don't. Some are alphetised by author, some by title, some by series title some by metafandoms - *just pick one*. I don't even care which at this point, though I would probably go for by author, just be *consistent*. In a perfect world I would love if we could toggle between, say, title/author/language (or country of origin) and decade (or century) of publication, but I have no idea how hard that would be to code and really any consistent method of organisation would be an improvement. However it is organised, a subcat for mythologies and folklore etc would be very useful.
For TV & Movies, I do not care if they are put in the same top level category or not, but I really wish we could see them by language or country of origin instead of/as well as by title. This might make subcats like K-Dramas unnecessary.
In conclusion: subcategories.
Wait, also: please, for the love of god, stop putting fandoms starting with The under 'T'. Honestly. Have millions of librarians lived and filed in vain?
Thank you for you explanation on how you use the Archive, and for your suggestions! I have registered your feedback; we promise to carefully consider all suggestions. As the process continues, we will post more about our progress and request further input.
There are some technical constraints that are difficult to solve regarding, for example, the alphabetisation, but it's something we definitively want to fix!
Comment on Introducing the Category Change Workgroup!
Poi Mon 29 Oct 2012 01:51PM UTC
Last Edited Mon 29 Oct 2012 01:55PM UTC
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hl (hele) Wed 31 Oct 2012 12:09AM UTC
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