Fanlore

Fanlore, this site, is a multi-authored site for, about and by fans and fan communities that create and consume fanworks. It uses a wiki model, based on MediaWiki software. Fanlore is a project of the Organization for Transformative Works. The site was soft-launched in September 2008 to a beta versionsvmadelyn: Welcome to Fanlore!, posted 28 September 2008 to LiveJournal. (accessed 3 November 2011) and came out of beta in December 2010.rbarenblat. Fanlore is out of beta!, posted 16 December 2010 to Dreamwidth. (accessed 3 November 2011) 
The wiki itself appears to have been set up in June 2008,The Main Page was created June 3, 2008 and the first article to be created on Fanlore was probably Die Hard on August 4.09:21, 4 August 2008 edit by user:Hope The Fanlore launch was publicly announced on September 29, 2008.Welcome to Fanlore!, posted September 29, 2008 to the OTW website (accessed August 21, 2017).
By October 2, 2008, the wiki had 386 articles, 4157 edits by 236 registered users.Wayback Six days later, a fan, Sandy Herrold, described Fanlore, saying, "It is so much fun! For me, it's great remembering what fandom was like when I found it, and trying to write that down; it's seeing people editing my edits (and having the article come out better), it's writing about other fans (and trying to get other people to write about the Fandom, not the Canon)...it's addictive! Come Play!" Warning Fanatic Happily Raving! archive link by Sandy Herrold (about the wiki in early October 2008, when the wiki had 800 articles) 
==The Idea Behind Creating Fanlore==
The initial inspiration for creating Fanlore may have come a month before the post that started the ball rolling for the OTW. On April 17, 2007, Speranza made a post about discovering inaccurate information about Due South on the Fan History Wiki and asked, "Does anyone know who's driving that bus? Is that anything we ought to get behind or should we just, like, back away slowly from the wreck of misinformation?"cesperanza. Arrrrgh: Things I DO NOT HAVE TIME TO DO THIS MONTH, 17 April 2007. (accessed 11 November 2011) Cathexys, astolat, and others discussed the possibility of starting an alternative wiki in the comments to the post.thread started by cathexys, 17 April 2007
Or, the origins might lie earlier; a fandom wikipedia was proposed as early as March 2006 by Hope,angstslashhope. This IS my homework... (dreamwidth copy), posted to livejournal 27 March 2006. (accessed 22 November 2012) who started the Supernatural Wiki three months later and then chaired the first OTW Wiki Committee the following year. Anatsuno, who also later ended up volunteering for the first Wiki committee, responded to Hope's initial post with "do it, do it, do it."anatsuno. 2006-03-27 comment. Dreamwidth copy of a LiveJournal post. (Accessed 3 January 2015.) The Fan History Wiki was not started until more than a month later. The mid-2000s may well have been just the period when wikis in general became a popular fan activity. Fans were certainly talking about preserving fannish history around that time; a fan in 2006 posted,
In any case, once the founders of what would become the OTW started to consider projects beyond just the Archive of Our Own, they decided to start a wiki that would preserve fannish history and fannish lore—hence the name Fanlore.otw-news. Looking for Wiki beta volunteers, posted to LiveJournal 24 June 2008.
==Fannish Activity==
Editing a fan wiki is as much a fannish activity as any other activity in fandom. Fixing links and tagging pages with categories can hit the same buttons as playing Mahjong solitaire and people who enjoy making recs, comprehensive lists of fannish stuff or fandom primers have the opportunity to go wild and connect everything with everything, which makes it also a rich playground for people who love fannish history and puzzles because every piece added helps to get to the bigger picture. Editing can sometimes seem like a solitary activity (and it can be, if you want it to be), but there is always something going on on the talk pages where editors try to figure out where to put the puzzle pieces, what to do with a page and how to improve it, or solve disputes by consensus. Although the editing history of a page and each change is recorded in the history section of a page, casual visitors often have no idea who wrote what. That gives editors a certain level of anonymity which can be appealing to lurkers who may not make bold public entries in their blogs, but who know a lot about what happened when and where and who like to contribute that knowledge.
As with all wikis, Fanlore depends on the contributions, large and small, of its users: In 2011, a fan wrote:
One of the biggest challenges Fanlore has had, even from the beginning, is emphasizing that all fans can have a voice in it, that all points of view are respected, and that the info on the wiki is not there because of a some over-arching plan by nameless "others," but because individual volunteers took the time and interest to add their opinions, experiences, and knowledge about what they are familiar with. One all-too common statement:
==Editing Projects==
Some editors have their own self-chosen projects.
Most notable so far is the zine project which was begun by two fans in the summer of 2009.one of these fans comments: When I stumbled upon Fanlore in July 2009, all I was planning to do was to add some zines to it in a single fandom. I swear! That's it! But as I did, I was reminded that those zines didn't exist in a vacuum, and that zines touched upon all sorts of other stuff -- cons, flyers, writing contests, awards, production techniques, glossary terms, and were the basis for all sorts of fannish things today. The whole world of pre-internet media fandom became something I wanted to help document. There are bits and pieces of fannish history here and there, but nothing that really ties things together. I thought the best place to do that was on a welcoming wiki where fans could pool their knowledge. And to get the ball rolling? Start writing about media zines, ALL media zines. Not only would this preserve the fanworks themselves, but it would branch out and show, in a much clearer way, how everything fit together, what fans talked about, what they expected from each other, how they viewed their rights as fans, the difficulties fans faced, and how they communicated and created in a world they really cared about. None of it any different that what fans have always been doing, of course, but in a different medium, one before computers." Mrs. Potato Head, Fanlore Journal on Dreamwidth, posted September 4, 2011 This project's goal is the documentation of all media fanzines and the things associated with media zine era fandom. As a result, thousands of pages have been created. Many more images have also been added in an attempt to explain and give context to these pages. It is one way to preserve a unique history and to provide future generations of fans a chance to know what media fandom was like in times before the internet.
Other projects include the creation of a comprehensive resource for Mary Renault fandom,As of November 2011 there were more pages for The Charioteer fan fiction than for Harry Potter fanfiction. for Forever Knight fandom, a record of one editor's love for everything Merlin/Arthur, and documenting the history of fan conventions and vidding. The "must document it all" approach of some of the projects has inspired other editors to try something similar—for example for Digimon Doujinshi, Final Fantasy Doujinshi and ItaSasu Doujinshi—and hopefully it will inspire even more editor projects in other fandoms and for other topics.
Beginning in early 2018, FanloreProjects were launched so that multiple editors could formally work together as a team to improve Fanlore's documentation of various topics (like a specific fandom or trope) or types of tasks (like categorizing uncategorized files). An up-to-date list of all existing FanloreProjects can be found in the Fanlore Projects category and the FanloreProjects About page. Anyone is welcome to both start their own FanloreProjects and join existing ones! Refer to Help:Starting a FanloreProject for step-by-step guidance on creating a FanloreProject, or simply add your name to the member list of a FanloreProject and start making edits to participate in it.
==Fanlore Committee==
:Main page: Organization for Transformative Works/Fanlore
Fanlore is supervised by the Fanlore Committee (formerly called the Wiki CommitteeRenamed in November 2016. See Updates from the Fanlore committee, archived, posted to Dreamwidth on 15 November 2016.), who provide direction, write policies and help documents, promote the wiki, support Gardeners in their work on Fanlore, and communicate with users via the Fanlore Dreamwidth community, Tumblr, and Twitter. Oversight of the technical aspects of running Fanlore is handled jointly by the Fanlore Committee and the Systems Committee.
Originally, Fanlore's Gardeners operated independently of the committee and were not considered official volunteers with the Organization for Transformative Works. This changed in 2016, when Gardeners were adopted as OTW volunteers and began to work more collaboratively with Fanlore Committee staff. Later, the "staff" role was split into two roles, Policy & Admin volunteers and Social Media & Outreach volunteers, and the additional role of Fanlore graphic designers was added.
==Site History==
The plan to start a wiki was in place by September 2007 (see the announcement post), but work began on it in December when the first Wiki Committee was formed. A name was chosen by June 2008. It was soft-launched in September 2008 to a beta version and by October 9 had over one thousand articles. It came out of beta in December 2010. The 20,000 article milestone was passed around June 2012 and the 25,000 milestone on 18 June 2013.User:Mrs. Potato Head. 20,000 articles (accessed 20 November 2012)fanlore: Thanks for taking part! (accessed 4 July 2013)
Some of Fanlore's policies had already been written when the wiki launched in 2008, but a few key features were missing or needed revision. Fanlore:Pre-1995 Fan Name Use was created in 2009. Policies created in 2010 include Fanlore:Intro to Fanlore FAQ, Fanlore:Capitalization, Fanlore:Fandom as a Category, and Fanlore:Image Policy. Every revision and addition necessitated a discussion with the users; thus, Fanlore policies took a fairly long time to write. The image policy has proved controversial in some corners of fandom.
The category structure was also substantially revised after the site launched. Originally, the wiki committee set up the wiki with a basic structure of six top-level categories (Fan Activities, Fan Communities, People, Perspectives on Fans, Glossary, and Fanworks, although pre-soft-launch wiki edits indicate that these were not the original names of the categories). These six are still present, though more levels have been added and moved around.
Instead of using categories to group pages about a single fandom, the wiki committee planned to make heavy use of the subpage functionality. Subpages are created by including a slash in the title—everything after the slash is the subpage name. However, the system proved unwieldy, especially for complex fandoms with multiple subfandoms like Star Trek. Another issue was that subpages made titles of pages about shipping extremely hard to interpret. For example, the original location for the page about fannish interest in Severus Snape was at Harry Potter/Severus Snape; meanwhile the Harry/Snape slash page was at Harry Potter/Harry/Snape. Fandom categories were added in April 2010., posted to dreamwidth Apr. 21st, 2010.
Post fandom-category category modifications include the addition of date categories, Tropes & Genres, Memes, subcategories for Fanworks, more Fan Activities, Fandoms by Canon Type, and more categories for shipping. Category changes were driven largely by site growth (what types of fannish topics proved popular to write about) as well as the wisdom of experience.
== Fanlore Logo ==
Fanlore had the same logo from the wiki's inception in 2008 until 2020, when the logo was redesigned. The logo used a green and blue theme with a hand-drawn style; it also sometimes appeared superimposed on a piece of notebook paper.
On June 30, 2020 the logo was redesigned to more closely resemble those of the other Organization for Transformative Works projects; the updated design featured a book and a magnifying glass, intended to represent Fanlore's mission of "examining and preserving fannish history".Introducing: a new look for Fanlore! via Tumblr. Published June 30, 2020 (Accessed June 30, 2020). The font used was Vesper Regular.
==Fanlore Graphics==
File:Stub September - caitie.jpg|banner for the Stub September challenge, created by caitie
File:June bloom banner.png|banner for the June Bloom challenge, created by SoyAlex
File:AprilShowersBanner-Sidhrat.png|banner for the Fanlore/AO3 April Showers challenge, created by Sidhrat
File:Fanlore 25K articles.jpg|banner for Fanlore's 25,000 article celebration (Jun 2013)
File:Fanlore 500K edits.jpg|banner celebrating 500,000 Fanlore edits (Feb 2014)
File:IFD-banner-gif.gif|banner for the inaugural International Fanworks Day Fanlore Challenge, created by Amyl (Feb 2018)
File:IDF_2019_Challenge_Banner.jpg|banner for the second IFD Fanlore Challenge, created by Linfin (Feb 2019)
File:Stub september banner.png|banner for the revived Stub September challenge, created by memorizingthedigitsofpi 
File:50k Milestone Banner.png|banner for Fanlore's 50,000 article celebration (Nov 2019)
File:IFD 2020 Challenge Banner.png|banner for the third IFD 2020 Fanlore Challenge, created by CarnwennanB312 (Feb 2020)
File:Fanloreprojects banner.jpg|banner created to promote FanloreProjects, created by Amyl
File:Fanlore_bingo_banner.png|banner for the second Fanlore Bingo Challenge, created by memorizingthedigitsofpi (June 2020)
==Fan Comments==
===Praise===
By 2010, Fanlore links began appearing in many LJ and forum posts, mainly by fans who were trying to explain a fannish term, a trope or even provide information about a zine. Many fanzine sellers are using Fanlore links to help fellow fans determine tables of contents and the visual quality of the zine they are considering buying.
General squee:
Other fans value Fanlore for helping them discover new facts about the fandoms they love.
And, on occasion, they love Fanlore for helping them rediscover old facts about the things they love:
Fans also find a deep satisfaction in tracking down information about their fannish obsessions and gathering it one accessible place for all to see and enjoy:
And some fans see the value in simply preserving fannish culture, and the memories of fans, before they disappear:
Others recognize the value of being visible to one another, of recognizing the value of what we do as fans for fans:
Some general comments:
===Criticism===
Some fans were skeptical about the idea of a fandom-specific wiki:
Other fans find Fanlore irritating or useless because it doesn't highlight the things they are interested in, or themselves:
The domination of media fans, lack of diversity, and not enough outreach and engagement with fandom are also common points of criticism:
Another common complaint since the earliest days is a lack of communication.
For some fans, Fanlore is just not interesting:
==Controversies==
===Image Policy===
The Wiki and Legal Committees, with feedback from Fanlore users,See the Dreamwidth discussions: Draft of Image Policy for Discussion, 23 April 2010. Image templates and Image Policy FAQ, 21 October 2010. Image policy FAQ revisions, 3 November 2010. Image policy clarifications, 23 November 2010. Some tweaks were made the following year in response to privacy issues related to explicit art: admin post: image policy, identity protection, editorial procedures on October 3, 2011 spent a year working on the image policy. Its completion marked the end of the beta period, December 2010.
The image policy was intended to address two concerns—copyright issues and whether sexually explicit images were allowed—but the copyright aspect has remained the main bone of contention, specifically, Fanlore's fair use of fan art. The Wiki Committee attempted to balance competing interests—the org's principles that fanworks are transformative and that chronicling fanworks on the wiki is legitimate commentary and constitutes fair use vs. fannish understandings about the "unauthorized" reproduction of fanart. On the one hand, U.S. fair use law is an important element of the OTW's mission to defend the legality of fanworks, and Fanlore's policy (which holds that reproduction of some fanart on the wiki is fair use) is intended to support the OTW's legal advocacy work. On the other hand, many corners of fandom consider reposting fanworks without permission to be absolutely unacceptable, even if those reproductions are in the service of chronicling fannish culture and fannish creativity.
Because the Wiki Committee did not report anything substantive between April and October about their progress on writing the policy,The first draft was posted 23 April 2010 and met with considerable resistance -- Draft of Image Policy for Discussion. The second draft was posted 21 October 2010: Image templates and Image Policy FAQ. The time in between was spent investigating technical shortcuts (none found), waiting for input from other committees, and rewriting into an FAQ format following Board recommendations. At one point, the Board also told Wiki to rewrite all of its existing policies in an FAQ format, and time was lost debating how to not have to do that. people were also concerned about the delay. Fanartist ratcreature was particularly frustrated with the image policy,see her August 23, 2010 post disgruntled ratcreature is disgruntled but when she complained to the Fanlore Dreamwidth community about the Wiki Committee's lack of transparency,ratcreature. communication/development of policies, 18 August 2010 a Board member froze replies and posted to say ratcreature's post was not appropriate for the forum.astolat. Board Post, 18 August 2010. To be fair, astolat responded after receiving cries for help from stressed-out Wiki Committee members. The Fanlore Dreamwidth community does not have explicit policies on what is and is not appropriate to post. ratcreature subsequently stopped contributing to Fanlore.
The debate was reopened in 2013 in the comments to an AO3 announcement concerning meta hosting.See 18 Feb 2013 comment thread in "OTW Board Approves Meta Hosting on the AO3". See also the discussion on fail fandomanon, starting on 23 February 2013.
==== Fannish Views of Fanlore's Image Policy ====
In 2010 Ratcreature wrote:
Other fans question why fanzine art in particular should even be documented or preserved on Fanlore saying:
In response other fans have pointed out that documenting the history and existence of each fanzine is important:
And others have pointed out that, particularly when it comes to fanzine art which is inaccessible and subject to loss and damage and decay, that the wiki needs to include a wider range of fan art:
And finally, some fanzine artists and publishers themselves have weighed in on the topic of whether their fanzine fan art deserves to be represented on Fanlore and whether this representation can be legitimately classified as educational:
Even while fans discuss the pros and cons of including fan art on Fanlore, some fan artists embrace Fanlore's fair use policy. For example, many fanzine artists have, over the years, lost copies of their fan art and are thrilled to discover it again:
More recent digital artists agree:
===Conflict With the Fan History Wiki===
The Fan History Wiki (2006-2012) was a for-profit wiki around which much controversy swirled. When the OTW announced the intention of establishing Fanlore as a place for collecting fannish lore and history, Laura Hale, creator of the Fan History Wiki, was openly skeptical.See comment thread started by hector_rashbaum in otw_news post titled "An Introduction to the Organization for Transformative Works". 28 September 2007. (accessed 11 November 2011) See Fan History Wiki for more information.
====Fan Comments about Fanlore and Fan History Wiki====
==Fanlore as a Reference==
Fanlore articles are often used as references by journalists and academics writing about fandom.
===Media Mentions===
* 
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* 
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===Academic Citations===
*Reading real person fiction as digital fiction: An argument for new perspectives by Judith Fathallah, First Published January 19, 2017, Sage Journals/Bangor University 
*Vom Kult zur Populärkultur und umgekehrt? Das Phänomen Harry Potter in Wissenschaftliche Forschung auf schausinsblau.de, veröffentlicht am 27. Januar 2012 (German)
*Knight L., (2018) “To Boldly Go”, MAC Newsletter
*"The JohnLock Conspiracy, fandom eschatology, and longing to belong" by Christensen, Bo Allesøe; Jensen, Thessa, Transformative Works and Cultures, 2018
==Statistics==
As of , , has articles and files which have undergone edits by registered users.Alas, a high and growing proportion of these users are spambots, but Fanlore has a number of gardeners (17 as of November 3, 2011) who, with great satisfaction, block them and delete their edits.
The twenty most viewed articles* on the wiki, as of February 15, 2014, were:Fanlore: Special: Popular pages (accessed 25 April 2012)
Article 	Views
The Draco Trilogy ‎ 	53,491
Incest ‎ 	37,801
Fanfiction ‎ 	36,781
Merlin (TV series) ‎ 	32,891
White Collar ‎ 	30,415
Merlin/Arthur ‎ 	28,706
Slash ‎ 	27,147
Sherlock (TV series) ‎ 	26,519
RPF ‎ 	23,590
List of Finder Communities ‎ 	23,421
The Vampire Diaries 	‎22,896
Hurt/Comfort ‎ 	22,219
Harry/Draco ‎ 	20,022
Archive of Our Own ‎ 	20,002
Mpreg ‎ 	19,851
SurveyFail ‎ 	18,942
What to Do About Harry Potter Porn ‎	18,922
Slavefic ‎ 	18,744
Stargate Atlantis 	18,567
Leverage ‎ 	18,321
In April 2016, the 20 most visited pages were:
Article 	Views
Main Page 	‏‎ 353,334
The Draco Trilogy 	‏‎ 57,358
Fanfiction 	‏‎ 47,142
Incest 	‏‎ 39,758
Slash 	‏‎ 39,619
Merlin (TV series) 	‏‎ 35,358
RPF 	‏‎ 33,411
White Collar 	‏‎ 31,897
Sherlock (TV series) 	‏‎ 31,430
Merlin/Arthur 	‏‎ 31,286
Hurt/Comfort 	‏‎ 28,217
Archive of Our Own 	‏‎ 27,096
FanFiction.Net 	‏‎ 25,082
List of Finder Communities 	‏‎ 24,758
The Vampire Diaries (novels)	‏‎ 24,372
Harry/Draco 	‏‎ 23,797
Fanart 	‏‎ 23,468
Mpreg 	‏‎ 23,130
Alpha/Beta/Omega 	‏‎ 22,495
The Man From U.N.C.L.E. 	‏‎ 22,009
For more statistics, see Special:Statistics. For general information about Fanlore, see Fanlore:About.
*The logging of "Most Viewed Pages" had been deprecated in Media Wiki 1.25 and statistic details are no longer accessibleMediaWiki 1.25 Release Notes
==Meta==
* Warning Fanatic Happily Raving! archive link by Sandy Herrold (about the wiki in early October 2008, when the wiki had 800 articles)
==References==
==Notes==
Category:Fanlore
Category:2008 Wikis
Category:2000s Wikis
Category:2010s Wikis
Category:2020s Wikis
Category:Multifandom Wikis