List of fan wikis

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A fan wiki is a wiki [a] that is created by fans, primarily to document an object of popular culture. Fan wikis cover television shows, film franchises, video games, comic books, sports, and other topics. [1] They are a part of fandoms, which are subcultures dedicated to a common popular culture interest. The digital humanities scholar Jason Mittell stated in 2013 that fan wikis were "[o]ne of the most popular and widespread uses of wikis". [2]

Fan wikis usually operate according to internal policies. Editors reach decisions through discussion and

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consensus decision-making. Some wikis are more hierarchical, while others operate more collectively. They usually appoint a small group of editors to serve as system operators (sysops) or administrators, who have additional powers to enforce rules. [3] Many fan wikis have rules that require editors to provide citations to reliable sources to verify their claims.

Fan wikis were first published in the early 2000s. Many fan wikis formed out of Wikipedia over disputes among editors about the level of detail that should be provided in articles. [4] These included fans of the television show Battlestar Galactica [5] and the Star Wars franchise, who founded Wookieepedia after facing complaints about the "overabundance of minutiae related to Star Wars appearing on Wikipedia". [4]

In 2004, the Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales and the former Wikipedia board chair Angela Beesley founded Fandom under the name WikiCities, a for-profit wiki hosting service that hosted regional wikis for cities. In 2006, the company attracted venture capital funding and changed its name to Wikia. [6] Wikia then began to assimilate independent fan wikis, such as Memory Alpha (a Star Trek fan wiki) and Wowpedia (a World of Warcraft fan wiki). [7] In the late 2010s—after Fandom and Gamepedia were acquired and consolidated by the private equity firm TPG Inc.—several wikis began to leave the service, 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 Those wiki communities cited Fandom's advertising methods, issues with security and outdated software, and corporate control as reasons for migrating. [8]

The following list summarizes fan wikis with articles on Wikipedia.

Fan wikis

Fan wikis
WikiDate launchedStatus [i] Founder(s)Most recent wiki hosting service SubjectNotesRef(s).
Heroes Wiki October 2006Defunct (2020)Fan communityIndependent Heroes (American science fiction television series) [9]
Lostpedia 2005 Live Kevin Croy Fandom Lost (American drama television series) [10]
Memory Alpha 2003 Live Dan Carlson and Harry Doddema Fandom Star Trek (American science fiction franchise) [11]
Nukapedia (a.k.a. Fallout Wiki)2005 Live Paweł Dembowski Fandom Fallout (American video game franchise)Moved to Fandom in 2007; forked to The Vault by Dembowski in 2011 after he joined Curse LLC as an employee [12]
Supernatural Wiki 2006 Live Fan communityIndependent Supernatural (American horror television series) [13]
Tolkien Gateway January 1, 2003 Live HyarionIndependent J. R. R. Tolkien [14]
The Vault 2011 Archived Paweł Dembowski Fandom Fallout (American video game franchise)Forked from Nukapedia in 2011 after Dembowski joined Curse LLC as an employee; hosted by Curse LLC to early 2019, when Curse's Gamepedia wiki hosting service was acquired by Fandom; archived by Fandom [15]
Wookieepedia March 2005 Live Chad Barbry and Steven Greenwood Fandom Star Wars (American science fiction franchise) [16]
Warcraft Wiki October 2023 Live Fan communityWiki.gg World of Warcraft (American massively multiplayer online role-playing game)Forked from Wowpedia (hosted by Fandom) in October 2023 following community vote [17]
Wowpedia October 2010 Live Fan community Fandom World of Warcraft (American massively multiplayer online role-playing game)Forked from WoWWiki (then hosted by Fandom) in October 2010 following community vote; hosted by Curse LLC from founding to early 2019, when Curse's Gamepedia wiki hosting service was acquired by Fandom; forked to Warcraft Wiki following community vote in October 2023 [18]
WoWWiki 2004 Archived Fan community Fandom World of Warcraft (American massively multiplayer online role-playing game)Forked to Wowpedia in October 2010 following community vote; archived by Fandom in May 2020 [19]
  1. Current as of February 2025.

Notes

  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]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Memory Alpha</span> Wiki about Star Trek

Memory Alpha is a wiki encyclopedia for topics related to the Star Trek fictional universe. Created by Harry Doddema and Dan Carlson, it uses the wiki model and is hosted by Fandom on the MediaWiki software. As of September 2023, Memory Alpha contains over 56,000 articles and 62,000 images in its English edition. The site is also available in several other languages.

Tolkien fandom is an international, informal community of fans of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, especially of the Middle-earth legendarium which includes The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. The concept of Tolkien fandom as a specific type of fan subculture sprang up in the United States in the 1960s, in the context of the hippie movement, to the dismay of the author, who talked of "my deplorable cultus".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wookieepedia</span> Online Star Wars encyclopedia

Wookieepedia: The Star Wars Wiki is an online encyclopedia for information about the Star Wars universe—including information on all the films, books, television series, the Star Wars Expanded Universe, any upcoming Star Wars material, and more. It is a wiki with some articles reaching up to 60,000 words, and is written almost entirely from an in-universe perspective. The name is a portmanteau of Wookiee and encyclopedia, a pun on the name of Wikipedia. The logo, too, is a visual pun showing the incomplete second Death Star as opposed to Wikipedia's incomplete "jigsaw logo".

Kotaku is a video game website and blog that was originally launched in 2004 as part of the Gawker Media network. Notable former contributors to the site include Luke Smith, Cecilia D'Anastasio, Tim Rogers, and Jason Schreier.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jimmy Wales</span> Co-founder of Wikipedia (born 1966)

Jimmy Donal Wales, also known as Jimbo Wales, is an American Internet entrepreneur, webmaster, and former financial trader. He is a co-founder of the non-profit free encyclopedia, Wikipedia, and the for-profit wiki hosting service Fandom. He has worked on other online projects, including Bomis, Nupedia, WikiTribune, and WT Social.

LyricWiki was an online wiki-based lyrics database and encyclopedia. In March 2013, it was the seventh largest MediaWiki installation with over 2,000,000 pages including 1.5 million songs. Prior to its shutdown, users on the site could view, edit, and discuss the lyrics of songs, which were also available for purchase from links on the site. Users were told to be mindful of copyright while contributing, and copyright violations were removed upon request. All the lyrics on LyricWiki were licensed through LyricFind.

Lostpedia is a wiki-powered online encyclopedia of information regarding the American television drama Lost. Launched on September 22, 2005, by Kevin Croy, the site uses MediaWiki software to maintain a user-created database of information. The site's content is under a Creative Commons license (by-nc-nd), which means that it is available free to the public, but cannot be used for commercial purposes and should not be modified by people who are not part of the community of the website. As of April 2019, the site contains an estimated 7,380 articles. On December 18, 2008, the site became a part of Wikia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wikia Search</span> Defunct free and open-source web search engine by Wikia

Wikia Search was a short-lived free and open-source web search engine launched by Wikia, a for-profit wiki-hosting company founded by Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley. Wikia Search followed other experiments by Wikia into search engine technology and officially launched as a "public alpha" on January 7, 2008. The roll-out version of the search interface was widely criticized by reviewers in mainstream media.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Uncyclopedia</span> Satirical website that parodies Wikipedia

Uncyclopedia is the name of several forks of satirical online encyclopedias that parody Wikipedia. Its logo, a hollow "puzzle potato", parodies Wikipedia's globe puzzle logo, and it styles itself as "the content-free encyclopedia", parodying Wikipedia's slogan of "the free encyclopedia" and likely as a play on the fact that Wikipedia is described as a "free-content" encyclopedia. Founded in 2005 as an English-language wiki, the project spans more than 75 languages as well as several subprojects parodying other wikis. Uncyclopedia's name is a portmanteau of the prefix un- and the word encyclopedia.

A wiki hosting service, or wiki farm, is a server or an array of servers that offers users tools to simplify the creation and development of individual, independent wikis.

Fandom is a wiki hosting service that hosts wikis mainly on entertainment topics. The privately held, for-profit Delaware company was founded in October 2004 by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley. Fandom was acquired in 2018 by TPG Inc. and Jon Miller through Integrated Media Co.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wowpedia</span> Warcraft fictional universe fan website

Warcraft Wiki is a fan wiki about the Warcraft fictional universe. It covers all of the Warcraft games, including the MMORPG World of Warcraft. It is both a specialized wiki built around the Warcraft universe and a collaborative space for players to develop and publish strategies for Warcraft games. It was officially announced on 25 October 2010.

Nukapedia, also known as Fallout Wiki, is a wiki about the Fallout fictional universe. It covers all of the Fallout video games, as well as all Fallout related content. The Fallout Wiki runs on MediaWiki and is currently part of the Fandom network. The site is also available in several other languages, including Bulgarian, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish and Ukrainian.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Curse LLC</span> Network of gaming websites

Curse was a gaming company that managed the video game mod host CurseForge, wiki host Gamepedia, and the Curse Network of gaming community websites.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tolkien Gateway</span> J. R. R. Tolkien fan wiki

The Tolkien Gateway is a fan wiki that documents J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy world of Middle-earth. It is respected and used by scholars. In 2023, it won a Tolkien Society Award. It has been described as "essential" in A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fan wiki</span> Collaboratively-edited hypertext publication to document popular culture

A fan wiki is a wiki created by fans of a popular culture topic. Fan wikis, which are a part of fandoms, cover television shows, film franchises, video games, comics, sports, and other topics. 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 present analysis, fan theories and fiction, and video game strategy guides and walkthroughs, while others only document official canon. Media and cultural studies scholars have studied fan wikis as forms of participatory culture that enable fans to build community.

References

  1. 1 2 Jones 2021; Mittell 2013, p. 38.
  2. Mittell 2013, p. 38.
  3. Mittell 2013, pp. 39–40.
  4. 1 2 Jones 2021.
  5. Jones 2021; Toton 2008.
  6. Hinman 2006; Tossell 2007, p. R.20.
  7. Stanton 2023; Tossell 2007, p. R.20.
  8. Bailey 2022; Jackson 2018; Stanton 2023.
  9. Heroes Wiki 2020.
  10. Mittell 2009, ¶ 2.1.
  11. Carlson 2016; Martinelli 2017.
  12. Oshry 2012.
  13. Kaplan 2010, ¶ 1.1.
  14. Tolkien Gateway 2025.
  15. D'Anastasio 2018; Oshry 2012.
  16. McLean 2007; Steyer 2015, p. 131; Whitbrook 2021.
  17. DiscordianKitty 2023.
  18. D'Anastasio 2018; DiscordianKitty 2023; Hunter 2014, p. 19 n. 1.
  19. Hunter 2011, pp. 41, 44; Hunter 2014, p. 19 n. 1; Laime 2020.

Sources

Book chapters and reference work sections

  • 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.

Journal articles

News and magazines

Websites