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 February 9, 2010, Fanlore has 9,894 articles which have undergone 92,809 edits by 1,631 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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Getting Started
This portal page is designed to help you get around as a new contributor. Welcome to Fanlore!
- 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. You can use the Template:UserProfile to help you fill it in. (See the template page for more information.) It is your profile page as a registered editor on Fanlore (here's some relevant help info); document your own fannish history!
- You'll probably want to have a quick look at Help:Editing to learn what the buttons of the text editor window are for.
- If you want to see if a page already exists, use the search box on the sidebar. You can also type in the name of a page in your address bar (after http://fanlore.org/wiki/, for example: http://fanlore.org/wiki/Star_Trek) to see if it already exists.
- To edit an existing page, just click the edit tab. Make sure you preview and save your changes.
- To start a new page, just give it a name in your address bar (http://fanlore.org/wiki/New_Page). You'll see a screen stating that the page doesn't exist. Add some text to start the page and you're off and running.
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 contributors:
Fanlore Chat is OPEN
Fanlore has a permanently open chatroom! Hang out and chat while editing.
We've also added a Fanlore:News page, and a new social networking community at Dreamwidth, fanlore, where you can ask questions, receive updates, or just hang out with other editors and the fanlore committee.
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.
More than anything, please ENJOY. Edit a page and add what you know -- what you have to contribute is valuable and appreciated. You really can't "do it wrong," and any niggles with formatting can be cleaned up later.
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.
