Romance Wiki talk:Policies

Self publishing

And also, this might deserve to be its own page, but honestly, AS DawnBurn has pointed out, does Romancewiki have a policy on self-published titles? On the one hand, I am not opposed to letting self-published authors use the wiki raise awareness for themselves (I file it more under "help the reader find books they might be interested in," once you add categories and so on) - and hey, additional content is additional content, if we don't have to add it, all the better - but I am quickly arriving at "If an author can't be bothered to put together a professional-looking, well-organized webpage, and a traditional publisher can't be bothered to print it, is it really worth my while to take whatever mess the author submitted, and spend my time formatting it?". In terms of dealing with unclear series titles and pages that make me listen to gothic music alongside my iTunes, I used to answer "yes," but now I'm leaning towards "no."

Now, as to whether we delete the content, leave it as and have ugly pages, or is format it thereby spending our time to add credibility to a self-published title with a bad webpage, Well...That's up for debate.

I don't think we should be in the business of policing what is 'acceptable' romance (aka 'wiki worthy'), which means no deleting, but...I also question spending so much of our time on self-submitting authors with very little or no distribution. I feel we'll be a more useful resource if we can cover what people are actually reading, and we are supposed to be a resource first, even if we are an outlet for self-promotion in some capacity. So perhaps we could make a policy of not deleting pages for self-published authors, but warning any wikigoers that the page is author-submitted content? We could have a box like the "marked for deletion" one.

That's my off-the-cuff $.02. --Robini 11:49, 18 September 2007 (PDT)

This is the thing that would be so perfect for the Community Discussion page, but until then... I am with you on getting fed up with authors who can't make a wiki page like other wiki pages. Some of them I sort of take to and fix and others I just think - WHY would I buy your book if you can't even use proper grammar and formatting here?? Thus you and Dawn and Amy have been finding the remains, the real dregs of the clean up job on non-categorized, orphaned pages - things I just got too annoyed to fix!! Ha! My take is to ignore them when you can (or when you get fed up). Some of them are just so bad.

On the topic of self-published, I agree with you, Robini, that it is a service to our users who may want to read these books and thus we have not had any policy about excluding any type of romance (so far).

On the other hand, I don't think we can "warn" users that the info comes from the authors themselves since most/a lot of content does come from the authors themselves. Just my $.02 so now we almost have a nickel. --Kay T 18:54, 18 September 2007 (PDT)

I agree that we should not be policepeople, but I have, in the past, made judgment calls about certain content that I felt did not meet the spirit of the wiki. This wiki is specifically for romance fiction. In my mind, that encompasses a lot of things -- from most women's fiction to erotica -- but sometimes content simply doesn't meet even that basic requirement. One thing I like to remind people, of course, is that authors like M.J. Rose and Mia Zachary started with self-published works.

Like Kay, I used to do a lot of clean-up on the "messy" pages, but it's a lot of work. The good news about the uncategorized, messy stuff is that it gets buried in system. The bad news is that when people stumble across this stuff, it creates a definite impression (which is why we were forced to add ReCaptcha for new users. @!@$# spammers!) I like the idea of noting -- much in the style of Big Wiki -- that the content hasn't been verified or vetted. Thoughts? Yeah, I guess we should move this to the discussion page. I'm all about democracy as I'm not the only one working here.--Romancewiki 16:04, 24 September 2007 (PDT)

I think if we move this to the discussion page it should be made into a pretty neutral question, and I am not sure at this point what the question is: Should we have any special notices for self-published authors? for pages created by authors about themselves? I think we are venturing into squishy territory here! Probably most users seeing Publish America on the book page and anyone going to the website will pretty quickly figure out what they are seeing. Then they can decide on the basis of the author's work/website whether it is something they are interested in. In the case that led to this frustration, it was pretty unclear just what was published and by whom, but we should just leave that confusion there, I think.--Kay T 17:01, 24 September 2007 (PDT)

Poking this again (move discussion?) because of Alathea Wright (new page). For an aspiring author, with no published credits and her first book coming out from Lulu, which is a vanity press (reputable). Leave the listing alone? We really should probably create a guide as to self-published versus not and whether or not RomanceWiki lists such. --DawnBurn 15:40, 12 November 2007 (PST)

Maybe moving it will get more people to give an opinion. My opinion is to leave the listing alone. But we might also need some policy about the self-published thing. Do you want to write something or wait to get more ideas? --Kay T 17:22, 12 November 2007 (PST)

I am of the opinion that an aspiring author without a published novel doesn't meet the spirit of the wiki. While I think it's very important to cover the breadth and depth of the genre, it seems to be time to start thinking about guidelines for self-published authors. The biggest problem in my mind is that so many of these entries are written as weird promotional items that don't work with the rest of the wiki content (yes feeling a bit cranky today). The positive thing is while these authors come in, throw up some content, and leave, most of this content is effectively buried in the site because there is no attempt to connect to the rest of the wiki.

I am turning thoughts over in my mind -- my come one, come all philosophy is warring with my standards-based mentality.--Romancewiki 17:32, 12 November 2007 (PST)

Yes, it is rather sweet that they think that throwing up a page on RomanceWiki is some sort of promotion. Maybe an unpublished author can keep stuff on her/his user page until actualy publication. But what about self-publication? --Kay T 20:22, 12 November 2007 (PST)

Oh, I'm way cranky about the self-published authors using Wiki as a promo tool without connecting their pages, formatting them properly and then not contributing to the community. But that's just me. I suppose it is a compliment that they look at RomanceWiki as a portal to more eyeballs. I think perhaps the solution might be to just have a policy that to be listed as an author (rather than aspiring info on user page) you have to have at least one published book. The catch there is what defines published? Obviously not just the traditional publishers since I think electronic publishers are valid too. But Publish America shouldn't count, IMO, nor Lulu nor just having the words up for free on your personal webpage. But that's hard to police and we should have a clear standard.

Kay, I recommend moving this discussion. To where, I'm unsure, but perhaps to the talk page of the unmade Help:RomanceWiki Policies or somesuch. And then linking to that on the Community Discussion page?--DawnBurn 12:21, 13 November 2007 (PST)

Ooh - now THERE's an idea I can go for: pushing unpublished author content to the author's personal page. Once it's there, if we're particularly hesitant to remove the page, we can have it say "such and such book isn't out yet/whatever, and therefore doesn't comply with standards for the wiki - but you can see it here on the Author's User Page." That might also come in handy if we ever want to start a category for fiction that's free on the web. --Robini 12:38, 13 November 2007 (PST)

Self-Published Authors/Books

I have given this a lot of thought this week, and here is where I am in this debate. I am interested in alternate views or arguments, believe me!

While I am strongly in favor of self-publishing as an option, I am not convinced that a self-published novel is enough for an individual to be considered an "author" for the purposes of being added to the wiki. Unless the book in question breaks new ground -- because it shows that self-published work can change the conversation via sales, reader awareness, etc -- I don't believe that these books are published in the commonly accepted sense of the word. I greatly admire the freedom offered by publishers such as Lulu.com and accept that sometimes the best choice for an author is self-publishing. I simply do not see that self-published authors and books have gone through the necessary community vetting to be considered part of the romance story.

If self-published authors wish to list their works on their user pages, I am absolutely fine with that. It is a fine way to raise awareness of a book. However, for the purposes of defining authors and books in the many ways we define them here, I am proposing that we do not include self-published authors and works. This also helps alleviate my concern that most self-published authors (and far too many e-published authors, but that's another topic) throw up content that is random, doesn't conform to the basic style guide, and isn't categorized or otherwise integrated into the wiki as a whole. So many of these pages just sit outside the solar system rather than flow into the rest of the site.

Agreements? Disagreements? Counter-arguments? Better ideas?--Romancewiki 18:21, 17 November 2007 (PST)