Wank

Wank is a synonym for masturbation. In mainstream UK slang, wank means nonsense or rubbish. There are several fannish definitions for the term wank.
Also see kerfuffle and discourse.
==Definition==
# A loud and public online argument, often involving many participants outside of the initiating members, and often devolving into side-taking, hyperbole, and personal attacks. Use of "wank" may especially indicate a debate which occurs over and over with nobody ever changing their minds, such as whether authors should use warnings, or write incest fic. Example: "There's another RPF wank going around. I'm staying out of it."
# A catchall term for objectionable or contemptible fannish behavior. Plagiarism, character bashing, sockpuppetting, blatant self-aggrandizement, and trolling are all wanky behaviors.
# Wank or fanwank can apply to elaborate canon-rationalization or theorizing. 
# Wank can have a separate meaning of overpowering of a character or a group of characters, as in "mugglewank" in the Harry Potter fandom."When the MC is: consistently overpowered, their actions do not have consequences/they are always right (protagonist centered morality to the extreme), they master skills like they’re leveling up in video games, smart people act stupid (to prop up the MC)". One definition given in the thread . Posted to r/HPfanficion by u/kaimkre1 on 10 April 2022. This usage might come from the Alternate History community, and its acceptance can vary between fandoms."Wank - Originally from alternatehistory.com, a "wank" is timeline where one nation is made unrealistically powerful. Maybe it wins all its wars, conquers its neighbors, and is somehow still beloved by all. It's similar to the concept of the Mary Sue in fan fiction. The term is meant to be derogatory, but as with Alien Space Bats, some writers have used it intentionally in their timelines." 
==Variations==
Wank is used as a suffix to reference particular kinds of wank, usually based on topic or motive. 
Grudgewank is wank where someone is stirring up trouble on one topic because they're upset about some other, unrelated topic. Grudgewank is often suspected or speculated rather than confirmed or admitted.
Shipping Wank is wank when disagreements on ships. Shipping wank is another way to sometimes say "ship wars" but "ship wars" are a similar topic but different.
==Controversy==
Some fans have objected to the use of wank to describe discussions or arguments about serious issues like racism or sexism, in any given fandom or in fandom as a whole, as it is felt that equating these issues with lesser issues such as ship wars trivializes them. In 2007, zvi wrote:
A post by Same Old Hope published in the same year challenged the idea that fans speaking out on topics like body image and cultural appropriation should be classed as "wank":
In a 2020 essay entitled 'What Fandom Racism Looks Like: Fandom Wank', Stitch wrote,
Suggested alternate terms have included imbroglioA little bit more about imbroglio (I am still retired, though) by zvi, November 1, 2007., debateUntitled LiveJournal post by coffeeandink, October 29, 2007. or discussion. From zvi's Pro-Character of Color/Anti-Racism Guide:
Since around 2015, "discourse" can be considered to have fulfilled this role as a term that implies more serious debate and blurs the boundaries between meta, fannish discussion and wank, but it is disliked by many fans for this reason, as they perceiving it to be disguising the pointlessly masturbatory nature of wank and/or twisting the meaning of the term "discourse", which should by rights refer to something more worthwhile.https://web.archive.org/web/20170423171834/http://dirkar.tumblr.com:80/post/150327980536/i-know-discourse-is-the-word-of-choice-in-fandom
For more on this, refer to the full article on Discourse.
==Communities==
Dedicated communities have sprung up around debating, spectating and commenting on fandom wank, the most notorious being Fandom Wank. Fail-Fandomanon is another which sprung up around a particular wank incident, the Vividcon warnings wank of 2010,, sunnycamehome2u, April 12, 2012 (Accessed May 30, 2021). and developed into a broader community. Wank is a common activity on communities such as Fanficrants. There is also a subreddit that frequently documents fandom kerfuffles: /r/hobbydrama. 
In the years following Strikethrough, every time LiveJournal staff posted an official update of any sort, there were been loud protests from some members of fandom; this caused a common attempt to post "In before wank!" in the first handful of replies. (Sometimes it was accurate, sometimes not.)
Some communities and forums are declared to be "wank-free," meaning the moderator staff will censor discussions that are becoming too heated, insulting or off-topic. Disemvoweling is sometimes used in these places.
==Further Reading==
* A Brief History of Fandom Wankage - Older than you think: When Dinosaurs Walked the Earth – A Brief History of Time Fandom Wank, page 1; WebCite, , by zoepaleologa, July 2006
* , Merlin Missy, date unknown 
* Famous Wanks; Webcite on the Fandom Wank Wiki, 2009
* , Fanthropology, February 2005
* , by Aja Romano at The Daily Dot, March 2013
* Generating traffic for your fansite? Use a method that generates positive metrics, by Laura Hale, 2008
* Famous Wanks you participated in/were around for, archive link, post on Fandom Secrets (2012)
==References==
Category:DiscussionCategory:Fandom Wars