User talk:Gaijin

Dear Gaijin, I have created a category for Apazines, called "Apazine", for zines distributed by APAs. I've included your definition of Apazine in the category. Hope this helps! InvisibleFriend 00:25, 7 January 2008 (EST)

Gaijin, Let's discuss this, since we seem to be in disagreement. ZineWiki, unlike Wikipedia, is not an unlimited bandwidth website, and is not supported by donations. Therefore, we try to keep such things as categories, terms and definitions within a parameter that is most useful to the larger fanzine community and audience. A term like "genzine", which is, at present, used to describe three zines, is not useful to the larger zine community and ends up isolating those zines it is used to describe, since the larger zine community won't be looking for zines under that category. Likewise with the label "personalzine": the more common term, "perzine", is widely known with the community and the most widely used, and this is the category under which most people would look to find a perzine they were searching for. They will not be looking under "personalzine" or "genzine" since these terms are little known and idiosyncratic, and the three or four zines categorized using these terms will end up being ignored. Since they are not useful categories or terms for the larger community, these pages end up taking up bandwidth for no useful purpose. On the other hand, the term "Apazine" which you introduced, is useful, since I could find at least ten zines which would fit in that category. As well, it is a term that not only applies to Science Fiction zines but also to Comic zines and so is widely known within the larger zine community.

I have no great desire to delete others' pages here at Zine Wiki, but as an administrator I have done most of the work in organizing the categorization of all the zines. I have read every entry on the site and I'm therefore in a postion to know whether a term or category will be useful for Zine Wiki. A term like "genzine", used to describe 'general interest' zines, could be used to describe at least a thousand zines here. However, it is not a term in general usage. It is a term that no other contributors have ever used aside from yourself. I think it would be silly to go through Zine Wiki and recategorize a thousand zines under the category "genzine" and insist people start using this term. This type of action would simply be a case of imposing my own likes and dislikes on the readership. Rather than do that, I prefer to use terms and categories that are already in common usage within the larger zine community.

Inasmuch as each article writer, zine editor and zine strives to be unique and stand out from the rest, it would not be useful to have as many categories as there are zine articles. With so many articles here at Zine Wiki, it can already be a daunting task to find what one is looking for. We have to try and make it easy for people to find the zines and categories they are searching for. InvisibleFriend 15:10, 7 January 2008 (EST)

Terms such as "genzine", "newszine", etc, were certainly in common usage in the mid-1980s, but I accept your general point. How about we adopt your changes, but we add one page defining those additional terms, to which all such enquiries can henceforth be routed? Gaijin 21:57, 7 January 2008 (EST)