How-to: Request A New Category

[Stratadrake]

Welcome to the Category Request forum! This place is for discussing the structure of FAC's submission categories, such as when we need to add a new category to the system to better accommodate submissions, or if we need to review categories to make sure they are properly sorted, or to properly document / describe each category in the system.

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Instructions for Posting

1. Topic Title / Subject...
   Please mention the name of the category you're requesting in your topic's "Subject" (Title) field. Don't give us vague, generic titles like "New category Request!" or "Can you add a section for this?" -- we need to tell each topic apart when we're browsing the forum topics list, and we can't do that if there's dozens of threads saying the same thing.
   
   
2. Explain it
   Of course, we want to know exactly what you're requesting a category for. We're not always well-versed in manga, cartoons, etc., but we're generally a quick study on anything with a Wikipedia (or at least TV Tropes) article.
   
   
3. Criteria we are looking for
   Generally speaking, we want to have 20 to 25 pictures (e.g. enough to fill one gallery page) by several different artists before adding a new category for it. This is easy to gauge ahead of time -- just do an FAC search regarding the new category (i.e. name of series and/or characters) and see what pops up. It's also generally what we do once the category has been added & needs populating.
   
   You do not need to provide us with URLs for each piece that will go with the new category -- we staff members can move pics to the new category directly from the search tool.
   
   
4. NON-Criteria, which we are NOT looking for
   The following things are NOT arguments in favor of a new category -- no offense:
   
   • The age (release date/year) of whatever you're requesting;
     
   • Its regional popularity or fandom (be it in Japan, America, Europe), or assumed popularity;
     
   • Your personal opinion or interest in it;
     
   • How much artwork you are planning to draw and submit for it in the future;
     
   • The fact that there may be "other categories with fewer pictures" than whatever you're requesting.
   
   
   
5. Limit one topic per request.
   Do a quick scan over the existing topics to see if there's an outstanding request for it already.
   
   
6. Limit one request theme per topic.
   Don't lump unrelated requests together into a single thread (it will be harder to review them). On the other hand, if you have several related requests for a single section (like character-specific categories for a given series), that is something you can mention in a single topic.
   
   
7. Bumping inactive topics
   If your category request is turned down due to lack of pictures, that's not always end of line. Give it about a month for FAC to grow, then do another search. If there are enough pictures by then, you may bump your topic so that we can re-evaluate it.

Background Information

There are always new manga and anime series, cartoons, movies and videogames being made, and most of them will accumulate some level of devotion, which in turn means submissions on FAC related to them. So as our site grows, the need to keep things sorted and classified for easier browsing grows right along with it.

Trivia: Some of FAC's submission categories date back months, a year or two, or even as far back as FAC itself. (The "Anime/Manga" and "Cartoons" headings are literally the two oldest categories we have, though their contents have long since been moved into subcategories.)

Ground Rules

1. Fanart categories
   Because FAC is first and primarily a place for submitting fanart, most of our submission categories are organized around the series on which fanart is based -- anime, manga, cartoons, comic books, novels, film and television, video games, and so on; these are the top-level headings in our system. (And we have no plans to create more top-level headings at this time.) From there, each heading is subdivided according to individual series, and are often divided up into sections for individual characters, fan-made characters, crossover fanarts, pairing-related fanarts, and fan-made comics.
   
   All top-level headings have a miscellaneous or "not listed" type of subheading that you can use if you do not see a section for a specific series. If you're submitting to these "other not listed" headings a lot, that's the first sign that we might need a new category for it!
   
   
2. Evaluating Demand
   The most important rule to remember: We will NOT add the new category just because you requested it. It's cool to want a dedicated category for something, but more important (to us, at least) is how many pictures can we fill it with immediately after creating it. Otherwise the category will sit there empty and say "sorry, no pictures found" whenever it's viewed -- and what good is that?
   
   So, to qualify for a new category, we should be able to find at least 25 pictures (one full gallery page) by several different users related to your request. Now the phrase "several different users" is open to some interpretation, but it basically means that we won't necessarily accommodate a category request if you're the only person submitting fanart of it.
   
   
3. No Categories For OC's or Doujinshi
   Finally, while we do create categories for "Fan characters" and "Fan comics" in general, we do not create categories for individual fan-characters or fan-comics in specific; it would not be fair to everyone else if we used categories for that.
   

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We will review category requests regularly, discuss them, and if we've done a search and found plenty of pictures to stock a category with, we'll add a new category from there and fill it with pictures.

[Stratadrake]

Avoiding Common Mistakes

• Do your research.
  One of the most common ways we divide up a large fanart category is by whatever character is depicted. However, we're not all familiar with which characters belong to which series, so...
  
  
• Don't assume we know anything about what category you are requesting.
  That is to say, don't just blurt out the name of your request (e.g. "Totoro needs his own category!") and walk off. Give us a brief description about what the request is. If Wikipedia has an article about this character, great! Give us the URL to the Wiki article and we'll take a look.
  
  
• Do not request a category solely to promote your OWN art.
  Remember the rule about OC's and user-made doujinshi: We will not accommodate requests if they serve no purpose other than to separate your artwork from those of other artists.
  
  
• Do search to see if the category you want already exists.
  This may sound stupid, but it's nonetheless true: if it already exists, there's no need to request it -- and if you can't locate it, we'll point it out for you.
  
  
• Do check for existing pictures we could put in the requested category.
  Remember, it's pictures first, new category afterwards. If we don't have about 25 pictures (one full gallery page) to stock the category with, don't expect to see it yet.
  
  
• Don't keep yourself waiting for a new category before you start uploading pictures related to it.
  Just go ahead and submit your pictures to the nearest category that's already available. Besides, as stated above, the more pictures we can find on FAC, the better the chances of creating a new category for them. Note that all of our master categories have some kind of "Miscellaneous", "Other", or "Not Listed" that you can use if there is no category to exactly match the picture you are submitting.

[Twenty]

so asking to add a category for a comic or manga of mine would be out of the question right?

[Touzoku-joou]

Exactly. Because if everybody had a category for their own original characters and series, the category lists would probably double and tehre would be overload liek whoah. Besides, you (and MAYBE your friends) would be the only people submitting to it. :/

The only exceptions would be for those who have a popular comic. If a bunch of different people here start drawing fanart of your characters, then a category for your series may be okay. :)

... I sound like a wannabe admin. 8D
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FAC

[GreenNinja]

Does creating new categories slow down the site much? I'm guessing if you made somewhere from 1-5, would that have any affect at all? Just curious if this is also taken into account during consideration.

[Stratadrake]

The amount of lag caused by any one new category is negligible. The real issue is stocking it with new pictures, and fixing a bug in the select box on the submissions page. Without that, creating new categories is effectively worthless.
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Strata here: Nanowrimo - FAC - dA - FA
Disclaimer: Posts may contain URLs. Click at your own risk.

[waterangel843]

i dont get it? so i cant request a subcat- thingy here? cuz i have one.

[Trinity_Fire]

Briefly wondering Strata, about how many pics do you need of a certain char from anime, minor game/anime/book, wtvr, before it can, say, 'deserve' its own category?

For example, how many pictures of a new anime before it will become a new category? How many for a character of an anime?

[Stratadrake]

That's not an easy call to make, but if you can find about a dozen....
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Strata here: Nanowrimo - FAC - dA - FA
Disclaimer: Posts may contain URLs. Click at your own risk.

[Trinity_Fire]

Oh, so like 15 or 20 or so pics. Good, as long as it wasn't something like 100. XD
Thanks.

[Phantomdragoness]

Okay, sohere's a quick question. If there's a catagory up, but no one posts pictures in it, will it be taken down, or just stay there?

[Breloom]

Depends really, if no one has used it in like months and months on end and it still has zero... maybe so.

For popular categories it might stay.

[Stratadrake]

In light of a few recent requests I'm going to clarify one existing guideline that few people have paid attention to: the number of artists drawing and submitting related material.

So while this isn't a strict rule, we generally want to see a minimum of 25 pictures . . . by at least five different users. The more, the better.

PS: Attempting to ignite 'memes' or otherwise solicit artwork exclusively for supporting a category request will be considered bad style (bad faith). We obviously can't (and won't) prohibit requesting other artists, but we can choose to refuse a category request if we feel that is the case.
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Strata here: Nanowrimo - FAC - dA - FA
Disclaimer: Posts may contain URLs. Click at your own risk.