Forum:Fanon Peer Review Team proposal

So recently, I archived a discussion about fanon quality, as it hadn't been commented on in about two months. It's unfortunate, especially since many valid points were raised, and no solution was ever really agreed to. Add to this our ongoing discussion of low participation in Fanon Battles and other featured content, and the demise of Featured Fanon and Featured Fanfic. Taking all this together, it occurred to me that there might be a way to solve &mdash; or at least work towards solving &mdash; all of these issues.

So I have come up with a tentative idea, that I'm calling the "Fanon Development Project" (although this is a working title)

What is the Fanon Development Project?
The Fanon Development Project (or FDP for us cool kids) would be a group of wiki editors that have a particular interest in developing and improving the Fanon Namespace (FN, for us folks too lazy to type out both words). It would be a volunteer group, with the only requirements for joining being participation in the FN and a desire to improve it. The project itself would be a place for said editors to discuss how to improve the FN, to coordinate their efforts, and to advance the goals and purpose of the FDP.

What will the FDP do?
I envision the FDP to fulfill multiple “helper” roles on the FN, while not assuming an authoritative position. Its roles would be, among others:
 * Fanon evaluation: The FDP would, upon request, review and rate works of fanon by authors. The FDP would read and discuss a work and evaluate it, perhaps giving it a score. They would help users improve their writing and, in so doing, work to improve the FN as a whole.
 * Outreach and assistance: The FDP would be the go-to group for new users who are having difficulties setting up or developing their fanon. They would be able to help people improve their writing, clean up their pages and apply the relevant templates and categories.
 * Features: The FDP would assist in managing, promoting and improving Featured Fanon, Featured Fan fiction, and Fanon Battles. We could re-tool Featured Fanon and/or Fan Fiction to use the FDP’s fanon evaluations as a metric for nominating or selecting fanon. Additionally, having users nominate their works for evaluation might also be a good way to determine whether those users would be open to having their content participate in Fanon Battles.

Remaining questions
As a whole, I don't know how this group would be structured. Speaking specifically to the evaluation portion of this, I think it would be simply a matter of creating a new template to categorize fanon pages that await rating, and then once rated, have the template edited to give the rating and re-categorize it. We might stipulate that the template, once a rating is issued, be relocated to the bottom of the page as a courtesy, just in case the author does not favor the rating. Aside from this, I don't really have any specific ideas. I figure, if the idea is popular and it takes off, that the members of that group will be able to decide how to function. I would hope that the project would be a relatively informal thing, without a leadership hierarchy or unnecessary rules. After all, it's meant to be a volunteer group and not a fanon government.

In any case, that's my idea. I do really need to stress that in order for this to take off, we'd need several users who are engaged in the FN to participate. The idea of the group is to allow the well-known fanon contributors to help the up-and-coming users, to encourage higher-quality contributions, and ultimately improve fanon as a whole.

-  LostInRiverview talk • blog  •  contribs 11:57, April 23, 2015 (UTC)

Discussion
I reckon that this is a great idea! It'll really help us to improve the content of the Fanon namespace. Perhaps 'Fanon Peer Review Team' could be a nicer name for this group. I'm all for it! &#8213; The  Tim   Man  (Infinite Histories • Galactic Crucibles • The Sims Wiki • Hallows Maleficent • Why I'm here in the first place ) 13:07, April 23, 2015 (UTC)

✅ I'm cool with it. This idea also gave me an idea to have an "Article Review Team" that pretty much does the same thing (giving articles a score, helping them reach featured article status, etc.), but does it on mainspace articles instead of fanon. --I am  k6ka  Talk to me!   See what I have done  13:25, April 23, 2015 (UTC)

I have an idea for how the grading system could work. We shouldn't use A's, B's, C's, etc., because that could be discouraging for authors should their fanon receive a 'low' grade for whatever reason. Instead, we could use a word or phrase to describe the grade.


 * Outstanding
 * Excellent
 * Good
 * Satisfactory
 * Some improvement recommended
 * Improvement recommended

&#8213; The  Tim   Man  (Infinite Histories • Galactic Crucibles • The Sims Wiki • Hallows Maleficent • Why I'm here in the first place ) 13:46, April 23, 2015 (UTC)