Fanlore:Portal
Fanlore is a wiki for and by fans who create and consume fanworks such as fanfiction, fanart and vids, to record and document the culture and activities of their communities.
Fanlore is a project of the Organization for Transformative Works, and is currently in Beta stage, following a soft launch in September 2008.
As of November 19, 2008, Fanlore has 1,711 articles which have undergone 20,554 edits by 447 registered users.
Anyone may register for an account with Fanlore to begin editing and adding pages. Anonymous editing is disabled in order to prevent deceptive practices.
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Most Wanted Links
This portal page is designed to help you get around quicker, and accordingly it will change in time to be suited to the needs of the moment. During our beta period it seems most visitors are editors-in-waiting, so here are the links you will need the most:
The Sitemap will give you an overview of the scope and organization of Fanlore. You'll most probably need to read a bit about what Fanlore is and what it is not. To edit the wiki you will need an account: Register on Fanlore. Once you have done that you'll have a User Page, fill it up! It is your profile page as a registered editor on Fanlore (here's some relevant help info); document your own fannish history and make links to pages you can then create and edit. You'll probably want to have a quick look at Help:Editing to learn what the buttons of the text editor window are for.
Fanlore Policies exist to guide your hand as you add content to the wiki; please read the PPOV article especially. Of course we also have a series of help pages; most wanted of them are usually the linking help page and the categories help. There's also a FAQ page in progress.
If you want to hang out with fellow Fanlore enthusiasts and editors:
Fanlore Chat is CLOSED
The chat room is currently unattended.
Please check back later or visit Fanlore:Chat for more information.
If/when you hit a snag and the chat is not open, tell us what you need in terms of admin or tech support on Fanlore:Wanted.
When you're in an editing mood, you can browse the Stubs Category to quickly find pages that need to be added to, and you can of course check what recent edits have happened with the Recent Changes page, to see if anything might jump out at you and demand your knowledge. Beware, it might be addictive.
The Basics
- About Fanlore - in plain English, the basics of Fanlore; how it's run, who runs it, the principles behind it.
- Fanlore Policies - policies developed by the Fanlore Wiki Committee to guide the wiki into a reliable, rich body of knowledge and experience that's both easily accessible and editable.
New Visitor?
- The Sitemap will give you an overview of the scope and organization of Fanlore, and provide a launching pad for you to start browsing content. The main categories the sitemap is based on are also linked from the navigation sidebar, under "Browse".
Though we're still in very early stages, here are some more fleshed-out pages through which we hope you can see the potential of the wiki as it becomes more populated and in-depth:
Return Visitor?
- Recent Changes, as the name suggests, lists all the recent changes made to Fanlore, including edits, new pages, removed pages and so on. There you can see what's happened since you were here last.
- New Pages will weed out all the simple edits and show you a list of all the latest pages that have been created.
New Editor?
- Register on Fanlore - create yourself a new username, or signup with your LiveJournal or other account by logging in with OpenID.
- Create your User Page! Once you've registered, you already have one. (It's the link in the sidebar which shows your own name.) Treat it as your own profile page as a registered editor on Fanlore; document your own fannish history and make links to pages you can create and edit.
- Get Help on using and editing Fanlore.
Power Editor?
- You might also find it useful to Find out how the Sitemap works in action if you're going to do some heavy-duty population.
- Browse the Stubs Category - these pages are marked as needing expansion or additional work.
- Tell us what you need in terms of admin or tech support on Fanlore:Wanted.
- Check the edits in Recent Changes, make any additions or edits that jump out at you.
Getting More Involved
Fanlore are always looking for editors with a bit more dedication to become Gardeners. Gardeners keep an eye on the edits being made to the wiki and offer both guidance to contributors and weeding & nurturing of information - making sure pages are fitting into the Sitemap, ensuring that wikilinks are included in text, occasionally rephrasing for clarity, creating redirects and so on.
Please contact us if you're interested in becoming a Gardener on Fanlore.
