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The purpose of this FAQ is to provide answers to questions commonly asked within the filking community. I've been a member of the filking community for about 25 years now as both a listener and a performer, and hope that the info provided here will be of use to new filkers as well as those curious about this whole "filk" thing. Many thanks to those who have contributed. Please note that my opinions may not reflect those of other filkers. This FAQ should *not* be regarded as being definitive, but only as a rough guide; I will be updating info over time. Wherever possible, I have also included links to other sources of related information. Unfortunately I've had to turn off commenting because of spammers but plan to reinstate commenting once I've switched over to Wordpress on the new server. Also see Kay Shapero's rec.music.filk Filk FAQ.- Debbie
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What is a "filkhog?" and how can I avoid being one? From Phil Parker: "A filkhog is someone who is perceived by the other filkers as taking more than his fair share of turns at the filksing and making other people unhappy thereby. I don't think it's at all possible to produce a useful objective definition, because behavior that everyone was happy with by performer A on night X might make lots of people unhappy if performer B on night Y did exactly the same thing. If you're a brash, confident performer who doesn't have any trouble getting songs in in a busy chaos circle, you could be a filkhog if you don't watch yourself. If you have enough of a repertoire that you're never at a loss for something to sing, and you're not restraining yourself from jumping in every time you have something that fits, there's a good chance you are a filkhog. The tricky part is figuring out how often you need to restrain yourself. Steve Macdonald's rule of thumb is a good place to start: If there are N active performers in the circle, and you last did a song less than N-2 songs back, you should probably wait unless there's some really special reason why your life will be ruined if you don't chime in right then. If you do do two songs closer than N-2 apart, you really need to wait some extra time. This rule is based on the assumption that you only are really wanting to jump in some of the time; if you are always ready to follow any song, you would be doing a song every N-2 turns, and you're probably filkhogging if you keep that up. If it's hard to find the line where one starts being a filkhog on one's own, it's really hard to find the line where one starts being a filkhog by taking too many requests. My own feeling is that you can take a couple of requests without counting them as your own turns for deciding if you're a filkhog, but if you do more than a couple of requests in the evening, you have to count the rest of them as your own turns. If you get more requests than you can do without either being a filkhog or not doing the songs that you yourself want to do, it is better to not do all of the requests than to either frustrate yourself because you didn't sing the songs you wanted or to make everybody hate you (a little bit at lesat) by being a filkhog." Please post your suggestions using the comment form at the bottom of this page. Also see the responses to this Dandelion Report LJ entry.
Base URL: http://www.filking.net All postings, columns, articles and artwork belong to their respective authors. Everything else ©copyright 2007 Debbie Ridpath Ohi. Reproduction and/or distribution of the whole or any part in any form is forbidden unless prior permission has been granted. |