Wikipedia

Fan wiki

A fan wiki is a wiki created by fans of a popular culture topic. Fan wikis, which are a part of fandoms, cover various cultural objects, including television shows, film franchises, video games, comics, and sports. The primary purpose of a fan wiki is to document its topic area through collaborative editing. Fan wikis document their subjects at varying levels of detail. They also serve narrative and creative functions. Some fan wikis present analysis, fan theories and fiction, and video game strategy guides and walkthroughs, while others document only official canon. Media and cultural studies scholars have studied fan wikis as forms of participatory culture that enable fans to build community.

Fan wikis were first published in the early-to-mid-2000s, some as a result of fans collaborating on Wikipedia and then forming their own separate wikis. Most fan wikis are currently hosted by Fandom. Many fan wiki communities have left Fandom in recent years over disagreements about advertising and software.

Description

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Further information: Fandom and Wiki

A fan wiki is a wiki[a] that is created by fans, primarily to document an object of popular culture. Fan wikis cover various topics, including television shows, film franchises, video games, comic books, and sports.[1] Fan wikis are a part of fandoms, which are subcultures dedicated to particular cultural objects. The digital humanities scholar Jason Mittell stated that fan wikis are "[o]ne of the most popular and widespread uses of wikis".[2]

Fan wikis usually operate according to internal policies that are reached through discussion and consensus. Some fan wikis are more hierarchical, while others operate more collectively. Fan wikis usually appoint a small group of editors to serve as system operators (sysops) or administrators.[3] Fan wikis also enforce rules about providing sources to substantiate claims. For example, on The Tudors fan wiki, the learning sciences scholar Jolie Christine Matthews stated that editors tended to rely upon scholarly nonfiction and traditional media sources in discussions.[4]

Function

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Fan wikis serve documentary, narrative, and communal functions. Fan wikis document and analyze their topic areas at varying levels of detail. Fan wikis are also spaces for collaboration on creative works, including fan fiction and the production of fan theory. Fans use fan wikis to interact with people with similar interests and assert cultural ownership over their wiki's subject.[5]

Documentation

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The primary function of a fan wiki is to document its topic area.[6] Fan wikis generally cover their objects of study in depth, such as through extensive film character biographies, detailed descriptions of video game plots, or the presentation of trivia about a television episode's production.[7] Wikipedia editors, by contrast, disfavor describing fictional elements at a high level of detail, referring to such material using the derogatory term fancruft. For example, Mittell wrote that in 2010 the article for the minor character Daultay Dofine on Wookieepedia, a Star Wars franchise fan wiki, was about 3,500 words long and had been awarded featured status by the community for its high quality of writing. The Dofine page on Wikipedia, by contrast, redirected readers to a list of minor Star Wars characters where the character was not described.[8]

Fan wikis also document their topics at varying levels of detail.[8] Some fan wikis, such as the Battlestar Galactica Wiki, only cover the television show's official canon.[9] Other wikis, like Lostpedia, have pages with analysis of the show's themes and plot, summaries of fan fiction and parodies, and speculation about the show.[10] Fan wikis are often more comprehensive than official materials; for example, the Star Trek fan wiki Memory Alpha provides more detail than the official Star Trek website.[11] Many video game wikis additionally document game mechanics and include walkthroughs and strategy guides.[12]

Narrativity and Creativity

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Fan wikis serve a narrative and creative function. Mittell stated that fan wikis create "alternative narratives" that "retell the canonical story of a franchise in new form", comparing them to reference texts about and annotated editions of "classical literature and mythology".[13] Readers then use the wiki to fill gaps in their knowledge.[14] Fan wiki narratives also incorporate the creative efforts of editors, who develop and maintain a parallel canon based on their own interpretation of the wiki's subject.[15] That interpretation may include the use of hyperlinks between articles, the categorization of articles, and the creation of navigation lists.[16] In a case study of Lostpedia, the narrative scholar Laura Daniel Buchholz stated that editors organized their perception of the show based on the geography of the island and the creation of maps.[17] Likewise, the information science scholar Olle Sköld compared the editors of the Dark Souls fan wiki to ecologists who explored, analyzed, and documented the landscape of Dark Souls 2.[18]

Some wikis also allow editors to present their own fan theories based on speculation and original research. On fan wikis like Lostpedia and the fan wiki for the American TV series Supernatural, there are dedicated pages for analysis of concepts, themes, and plot elements.[19] Heroes Wiki, a fan wiki for the American TV series, likewise featured spoilers and fan theories about future episodes and plot developments.[20] Others, like the Battlestar Galactica Wiki and the Doctor Who franchise fan wiki, prohibit fan fiction or fan theories.[21]

Community

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Fan wikis serve a communal role. Fan wikis allow editors with similar interests to share in their enthusiasm and knowledge of a franchise. Mittell and the media and cultural studies scholar Henry Jones have analyzed fan wikis as paratexts that expand upon and explain a wide range of popular culture texts.[22] In a study of the World of Warcraft wiki Wowpedia (formerly WoWWiki), the writing and media scholar Rik Hunter wrote that fan wikis require editors to collaborate and share ownership of their collective work.[23] By contrast, the fan study scholar Matt Hills found that editors on the Doctor Who fan wiki requires editors to have expertise of the site's policies and guidelines to contribute.[24]

Fan wikis sometimes collaborate with their objects of documentation. For example, the Star Trek Beyond writers Simon Pegg and Doug Jung consulted the Memory Alpha during the film's production and consulted the wiki's administrators. Similarly, Lucasfilm's Star Wars database manager contributed to Wookieepedia.[25] Lostpedia became a part of the cultural text when its administrators worked with the runners of an official alternate reality game called the Lost Experience to hide clues on the wiki.[26]

History

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Early fan wikis started in the early 2000s. Many fan wikis formed out of Wikipedia over disputes about the level of detail that should be provided in articles.[27] Fans of the television show Battlestar Galactica, who edited articles about the show on Wikipedia, eventually formed their own wiki.[28] Likewise, fans of the Star Wars franchise founded Wookieepedia after facing complaints about the "overabundance of minutiae related to Star Wars appearing on Wikipedia".[27]

In the mid-2000s, Fandom (then known as Wikicities and Wikia) began to assimilate independent fan wikis, such as Memory Alpha (a Star Trek fan wiki) and Wowpedia (a World of Warcraft fan wiki). In the late 2010s to the early 2020s, several fan wikis left Fandom, including the RuneScape, Zelda, and Minecraft wikis. Those wiki communities cited Fandom's advertising methods, issues with security and outdated software, and corporate control as reasons for migrating.[29]

See also

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Notes

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  1. ^ A wiki is a form of hypertext publication on the internet which is collaboratively edited and managed by its audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages that can either be edited by the public or limited to use within an organization for maintaining its internal knowledge base.[1]

References

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  1. ^ a b Jones 2021; Mittell 2013, p. 38.
  2. ^ Mittell 2013, p. 38.
  3. ^ Mittell 2013, pp. 39–40.
  4. ^ Matthews 2016, p. 37.
  5. ^ Jones 2021; Mittell 2013, pp. 38–42.
  6. ^ Comerford 2018, pp. 288–298; Jones 2021; Mittell 2013, p. 38; Sköld 2017, p. 1313.
  7. ^ Mittell 2013, pp. 38–40.
  8. ^ a b Mittell 2013, p. 39.
  9. ^ Toton 2008.
  10. ^ Mittell 2009, ¶¶ 2.2–2.3, 2.12.
  11. ^ Comerford 2018, p. 290.
  12. ^ Mittell 2013, pp. 40–41; Sköld 2017, p. 1313.
  13. ^ Mittell 2013, p. 40.
  14. ^ Booth 2009, p. 378–379; Comerford 2018, p. 290; Mittell 2013, p. 40.
  15. ^ Booth 2009, pp. 374–375; Mittell 2013, pp. 38–39; Toton 2008.
  16. ^ Booth 2009, pp. 381, 387–388; Hills 2015, pp. 370–371; Mittell 2009, ¶¶ 2.12; Sköld 2017, p. 1314.
  17. ^ Buchholz 2018, p. 249–251.
  18. ^ Sköld 2017, pp. 1313–1314.
  19. ^ Jones 2021; Mittell 2009, ¶ 2.2–2.3, 2.12; Mittell 2013, pp. 40–41; Re 2016, p. 69.
  20. ^ Booth 2009, pp. 386–387.
  21. ^ Hills 2015, p. 371; Toton 2008.
  22. ^ Jones 2021; Mittell 2013, p. 39.
  23. ^ Hunter 2011, p. 54.
  24. ^ Hills 2015, p. 363–364, 370–371.
  25. ^ Comerford 2018, pp. 286–288.
  26. ^ Mittell 2009, ¶¶ 2.34–2.35.
  27. ^ a b Jones 2021.
  28. ^ Jones 2021; Toton 2008.
  29. ^ Bailey 2022; Jackson 2018; Stanton 2023.

Sources

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Book and encyclopedia chapters

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  • Jones, Henry (2021). "Wikis". In Baker, Mona; Blaagaard, Bolette B.; Jones, Henry; Pérez-González, Luis (eds.). The Routledge Encyclopedia of Citizen Media. Critical Perspectives in Citizen Media (ebook ed.). London: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-315-61981-1.
  • Mittell, Jason (2013). "Wikis and Participatory Fandom". In Delwiche, Aaron; Henderson, Jennifer Jacobs (eds.). The Participatory Cultures Handbook (ebook ed.). New York: Routledge. pp. 35–42. ISBN 978-0-203-11792-7.
  • Re, Valentina (2016). "Beyond the Threshold: Paratext, Transcendence, and Time in the Contemporary Media Landscape". In Noto, Paolo; Pesce, Sara (eds.). The Politics of Ephemeral Digital Media: Permanence and Obsolescence in Paratexts. Routledge Studies in New Media and Cyberculture (ebook ed.). New York: Routledge. pp. 60–74. ISBN 978-1-315-71833-0.

Journal articles

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Websites

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