Fanlore

The Wiki Committee have revised Fanlore's policy on Fandom as a Category and have posted the revised version of the policy change to the Fanlore wiki. You can read it here: http://fanlore.org/wiki/Fanlore:Fandom_as_a_Category.

We invite discussion on the new policy at the Fanlore Dreamwidth community here: http://fanlore.dreamwidth.org/23175.html. If there are no problems or issues that require a change, the policy will become final in seven days after posting (4/28/2010).

Thanks!

Our fannish wiki project, Fanlore, is both fun and useful! Allow us to demonstrate:

Ever gafiated because your fanpair couldn't understand that trickyfish would never pass the broccoli test? Ever have a BNF brit-pick your Pros curtainfic only to declare that you'd been totally fanon-Jossed by the hivemind? Ever suspected a profic of being a fusion from your gateway fandom with the serial numbers filed off by a flounced BOFQ? Ever had your AMTDI badfic kripked so that you had to fridge your Mary Sue, then during machete beta realized you're circling the id vortex? Ever had your C6D PWP hit someone's embarrassment squick, and regretfully offered them brain bleach? Ever been flamed for saying someone's BSO has too much manpain to be a GQMF based on fannish osmosis? Ever made Paul Gross arms because FIAWOL? Ever followed your BFF's fannish drift into WNGWJLEO tinhat territory, only to find yourself in a kerfluffle in which lurkers support you in email after Snacky's law goes into effect, then declared FIJAGH? Ever realized the little black dress in your vampire AU GSF is suffering from a bad case of zombie hand?

Well, luckily Fanlore is at the ready, and we can all avoid disaster!

Support the OTW, and enrich fandom's vocabulary of experiences.

Description: The Wiki Committee is in need of a terrific writer to help us straighten out the internal side of Fanlore -- basically, we need help reorganizing and rewriting policy pages and help files, and organizing them in a user-friendly manner. You do not need to be an expert in wiki markup, though some experience and comfort with basic wiki markup (linking, categorizing) is needed.

In these tumultuous times of fans having multiple journals, websites, networks and streaming sites (with slightly different versions of their handle on each!), and with Web 2.0 companies and various hosting sites folding, failing, or cutting back on their services, we'd like to remind fans that they can use Fanlore to keep track of the fans, fan sites, fan fiction, art, vids, and other fanworks they love.

Remember: Fanlore is searchable and easily updatable, so make it easy for people to find your journals, webpages, and fanworks. You can also create pages for other people or add links to their pages, so if you just re-discovered a story or a vid you thought you'd lost, put the link into Fanlore so others can find it too!

Remember, too, that GeoCities will be closing down on October 26, 2009! (So many sites, so little time, people!) If you, or someone you can get in touch with, has a site that will be lost, please contact Open Doors ASAP.

The Wiki committee of the OTW is pleased to announce the formation of a Fanlore community on Dreamwidth. We needed a place for people interested in the Fanlore wiki to congregate, talk about pages (cool ones, ones with issues and concerns, plus general "how do I..." type stuff), and just keep in touch with what is happening on the site. We've been looking at various options for a place to gather, and Dreamwidth's open ID option makes it attractive; you don't have to be a member, but can comment using a free open ID account. (Note: if you do want to be a member of Dreamwidth, some folks in the community have been donating invite codes.) The community is also syndicated on LJ, so you can also keep in touch with what's going on here.

Please spread the word about the community, and about Fanlore itself. While some areas of fandom (and some individual fandoms) are well covered in the wiki, others are badly under-represented. We will be doing outreach to some of these under-represented areas, trying to get help and expertise, but please help us spread the word. If you know people who have been nervous about Fanlore or afraid they were "doin' it rong" (offhand assurance: you really can't do it wrong), please tell them that there's a place they can go to ask questions, either technical or content-based. Membership is open; everyone is welcome!

The Wiki committee is pleased to announce the opening of a permanent chat room for the Fanlore community. You don't need to be a member of OTW to get into the room. It's open to everyone and can be accessed from the Main Page of Fanlore. Best of all, it's open 24 X 7, so it's always there for you to come in and chat about edits and articles with other fans at any time, day or night.

FYI -- There will be a log of the chats kept, but it will be purged on a periodic basis.

Other cool things we've done recently include the Fanlore Live panel at Escapade. We invited several fans who have been around a long time (think decades rather than a few years) to talk to us about how they got into fandom. We have our notes put up here. Check it out.

And be sure to watch this space for more information on participating in our Oral Histories.

--The Wiki Committee: Rache, Melina, Anatsuno, Betty, Meri