Fanlore:News/2011
November 24, 2011
Systems is planning to upgrade Fanlore's server so they can install Squid (for page caching) to help the site run faster. A brief downtime is scheduled for 16:00 UTC Friday November 25 2011, so Fanlore will be inaccessible during that time.
November 23, 2011
The image policy FAQ and Editorial Procedures have been updated.
November 16, 2011
The Wiki Committee has posted a second draft of the image policy FAQ addition for comment. Check out the text of the draft on dreamwidth!
Based on user feedback (and fail_fandomanon!), we've updated Fanlore:Contact. Please continue to let us know if anything is broken or outdated on the wiki.
November 11, 2011
Fanlore, at long last, has a Twitter! You can find our informal news updates at fanlore_news. Feel free to tweet at us your concerns, thoughts, and suggestions -- we'll do our best to reply!
For those of you uninterested in Twitter, fear not: all important updates will proceed through direct email and this Dreamwidth community, as well as being mentioned on the Main Page of the wiki itself. Also, we hope to embed the Twitter feed neatly on the Main Page in the future.
October 26, 2011
The Wiki Committee is planning to turn off OpenID at some point as it is a hard service to support, and many OpenID servers (such as LiveJournal) have issues with their stability. However, we have 300+ accounts that use OpenID, or who have OpenID registered on their account. If you use OpenID, please follow these instructions to preserve access to your account.
We are not in any rush to turn off OpenID, and please feel free to ask for assistance — moving people over may take some time, and we'll send out another email/post another post closer to the time when we are ultimately ready to turn it off.
October 18, 2011
We're pleased to announce that Doro has joined the wiki committee!
October 6, 2011
At long last, a new challenge! The Total Braindump Challenge (from July) is definitely closed, and we now present....
Women Characters, Science Edition!
In celebration of Ada Lovelace Day (October 7), why not create a Fanlore article about your favorite female character who is a scientist, engineer, or mathematician? Tell us about your fannish experiences with these characters — the women themselves, the relationships they’re in (het, lesbian, canonical, fannish, etc.), the fanworks they star in — whatever you can think of! You can stub out a new page, or add a sprinkle of information on an existing page.
October 3, 2011
Image Policy, Identity Protection, Editorial Procedures -- Policy Update
The wiki committee has been working on some additions and clarifications to our FAQ materials and policy pages. We present all three of them on the DW community, for your perusal and commentary. We look forward to your feedback; if there are no objections, we'll make these changes within the next few days.
September 26, 2011
Hi all. Recent conversations between the wiki committee and some Fanlore users have inspired us to offer these friendly reminders:
There are two kinds of pages about fans on Fanlore: userpages, and pages about people. Anyone can edit their own userpage to say whatever they want to say; each userpage is edited by the user in question, and not by others.
Pages about people (unlike userpages) are group-edited. Fanlore is a collaborative project, and no individual user "owns" any given page -- even the page about themselves.
If you are a fan and there is a page in Fanlore about you, you are welcome to edit that page as long as you abide by Fanlore's editorial policies and our ethical standards for community content; of course, others are also welcome to edit the page about you as long as they abide by those editorial policies and community standards, too.
(See more of this post at the DW community.)
August 12, 2011
Fanlore now has its own copy of the FixBunching template, which lines up block-level items along the left or right margin.
Also added is a SiteTumblr template, for Tumblr pages that are particularly fannishly influential! This template is a work in progress, so please feel free to suggest changes.
July 18, 2011
Total Braindump Challenge: "The best of times, the worst of times..."
The What's Hot Now challenge is officially closed! (Remember, you are always welcome to take up a previous challenge at any time; check out our previous challenges here.) We now present...
Total Braindump Challenge: "The best of times, the worst of times..."
Pick an event in fandom that, for better or worse, people are still talking about years (or months) later. If it doesn't yet have an article on Fanlore, create one, and throw into it everything you can think of. Tag the page with stub and possibly also add the words "total braindump" somewhere near the beginning, so later people know they're actively encouraged to clean up the page, add details, and move things around.
July 10, 2011
It's the middle of 2011, and the Fanlore wiki committee is feeling the need for some new energy and new enthusiasm. We're also short on members, so we're putting out a call: we are looking for more fans to join the Fanlore Wiki Committee!
June 26, 2011
New Challenge: What's Hot Now:
A new challenge awaits!
We challenge you to contemplate and document What’s Hot Now -- What’s the most recent fanwork (story, vid, piece of fanart) you’ve seen and loved? Create a page for it and write about why it is awesome.
Remember, you can always go back to the Red Print challenge at any time! We welcome new edits on old challenges :)
June 24, 2011
The OTW's Wiki Committee will host a second introductory chat to editing Fanlore on Sunday, June 26 at 17:00 UTC in the Fanlore chatroom on Campfire. The chat is aimed at both current and new editors.[1]
Come join us! The chatroom can be accessed at https://fanarchive.campfirenow.com/60af4
June 18, 2011
The transcript from the May 28 Fanlore chat session has been posted to the Dreamwidth community.
The wiki committee has also posted a revised category proposal to the Dreamwidth community.
June 6, 2011
Thanks to all who attended our introductory chat for those who are interested in editing the wiki!
We've been asked to share the chat transcript so that those who weren't present can learn what they missed. Before we do that, we want to make sure that everyone who was present is comfortable with public posting of the transcript -- but we don't have contact info for everyone who attended. So we're putting out a call: if you were present at that chat, please let us know if you'd be comfortable with the chat transcript becoming public?
We're working now on scheduling our next training chat. The chat will be open to the public, and this time we'll make sure everyone knows from the beginning of the chat that we'd like to share the transcript. [2]
May 27, 2011
Introductory chat to editing Fanlore, to be held on Saturday May 28 at 4 a.m. UTC in OTW's public chatroom on Campfire. The chatroom can be accessed at https://fanarchive.campfirenow.com/e79cc
The chat is aimed at both current and new editors.
May 21, 2011
The wiki committee has posted to the Dreamwidth community a category proposal for creating a more flexible fandom category structure.
May 7, 2011
Your next mission, should you choose to accept it, is to look up your favorite fandoms on Fanlore, and when you run into a thicket of red words (which means pages are waiting to be created), click on something you can’t believe no one’s written about yet!
April 29, 2011
The last of the April Showers fandoms are up! Sorry about the delay in posting them! We invite you to tell us your history, your stories; share your memories and experiences; preserve your culture — in these fandoms or in any others! Check out the April Showers challenge tag on the AO3 for inspiration on other fandoms to contribute to — or, if you don't see your fandoms there yet, all the more reason to share!
April 18, 2011
Two news items today:
- The front page text has been revised. Check it out!
- By request, the wiki committee is creating a Chronology category for history articles, plus date categories.
April 12, 2011
New Challenge: Examples Galore!
In keeping with April Showers, let's expand the range of examples on Fanlore! A lot of the examples given for fannish tropes and genres documented on Fanlore are fanworks from just a few fandoms. Find a trope or genre you like and add a link to a fanwork from your fandom. April Showers fandoms (first six already available, next group of six soon to come!) and all other fandoms welcome — just expand, expand, expand!
March 29, 2011
New Challenge: Women Characters!
As the observation of Women’s History Month in many parts of the world wraps up, why not give one last hurrah to the amazing women in our favourite canons? Tell us all about your fannish experiences with women characters — the women themselves, the relationships they’re in (het, lesbian, canonical, fannish, whatever!), the fanworks they star in — whatever you can think of! Stub out pages, or add a sprinkle of information on an existing page — let’s show how much we love these amazing women!
March 27, 2011
Fanlore's server will be down briefly on Tuesday, March 29, at 20:00 UTC
March 15, 2011
Pick a page - stub or not! - of a fandom, character, relationship, trope, person, or anything else at Fanlore. Add five details to it, large or small - bullet-point lists or full paragraphs, whatever you can think of!
February 28, 2011
New Challenge: Introduce a Friend!
Promote Fanlore participation to your fannish friends! Fanlore benefits most from multiple perspectives, and our contributors are our best advocates. Tell a friend about Fanlore, and encourage them to join in and document their particular corner of fandom, or to add another perspective on existing pages!
February 19, 2011
Fanlore will be down for approximately two hours on Sunday, February 20, starting at noon UTC -8.
February 8, 2011
New Challenge: Share the Love!
Writing about yourself might feel a bit too self-congratulatory... but writing about a friend won't! Do you have a friend or just someone you admire who's done something awesome in fandom? Stub out a page about that person and the awesome fannish things they do!
January 25, 2011
New Challenge: Origin Stories!
How did you come into fandom? Did someone show you the way in, or did you find fandom via google? When did you enter fandom? What was your first fandom? What does fandom mean to you?
This week, edit your user or fan page to include the story of how you got here and why you stayed.