Out of the Closet and on to Wikipedia
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| Title: | Out of the Closet and on to Wikipedia |
| Creator: | Lyrastar |
| Date(s): | 2007 |
| Medium: | print, CD |
| Fandom: | Star Trek: TOS |
| Topic: | Star Trek: TOS, Kirk/Spock |
| External Links: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Out of the Closet and on to Wikipedia is an article by Lyrastar in Legacy #3.
The topic was the underground nature of K/S and how technology was changing its exposure to the "outside world." It includes the text of the very first creation of the Kirk/Spock page on Wikipedia.
Excerpts
Information! It’s all around us, and as it grew clear that Paramount had no interest in shutting down K/S, not only fiction but other K/S resources became available online. In 1999 the Foresmutters Project put up a partial bibliography of early K/S, then in 2002 Jenna Sinclair put up “A Short History of Early K/S” which was, in a way, a small precursor of the Legacy project. But even more in the public eye, Wikipedia—the huge open-source encyclopedia that has become a quick and easy go-to guide for contemporary culture—has an article on K/S! What does that say for the standing of K/S in the eyes of the world? Okay, so when the Wikipedia article was first written in April 2005, it sounded like the author—Michael H.—was not entirely neutral.
Within a few days, another Wiki reader came along and made the language more neutral, added links, and within a few months—presto!—there was a useful article including a link to Jenna’s history and the Beyond Dreams site.The good and the bad about Wikipedia has been that anyone visiting can change an article with two clicks and a few keystrokes. Content is added essentially on the honor system. Like everything on Wikipedia, one must take that into consideration and decide how much to trust the source. Of interest, the revisions since the initial one have been quite mundane: no sabotage, no mockery, no exclamations of distaste. There have been one or two comments from detractors on the secondary discussion page, but at the time of this publication the only alterations to the text proper have been objective, legitimate edits.
The downside of the widespread use and acceptance of Wikipedia has been the extent of its widespread use and acceptance; even cyberspace is not infinite. In 2006 Wikipedia began deleting articles judged to be of too little import to deserve server space. So far, the K/S article has made the cuts. Other K/S related articles, such as one on Diane Marchant, did not.
In mid-2006, another Wiki project—fanhistory.com—was started by Purple Popple to house the deleted articles and allow expansion ad lib as specific to the history of fan fiction. K/S has been featured in it. I hope this history site flourishes. It’s great to have a database that can be added to by all knowledgeable sources as history evolves. I hope the main Wikipedia K/S article survives; it’s nice to see K/S proudly up there in such a prominent reference guide. But it doesn’t matter; the history is ours regardless, and if the recounting disappears from everywhere else, it’ll still be found in the pages of Legacy.
The Wikipedia Article Itself
Here is a link to the first edit on the Kirk/Spock article, created by Michael Hopcroft on 22 April 2005. The article was nominated for deletion on 6 June 2006, but people voted to keep it. As of November 2017, the article is still up, though the talk page shows intermittent discussion about deleting it.
Note: the "obscure social scientist" referred to appears to be Henry Jenkins.
One early sample discussion (2011):
Call for deletion! — anonymous comment
Christ....'o ta hell mae this article? — anonymous comment
An' where is theCheKov/Sulu slash page??? — anonymous comment
- I agree. This is not noteworthy. If you must, include it in Kirk/Spock individual pages, but I fail to see why this needs an article of its own. — anonymous comment
- Naw, this crap is not even worth that. — anonymous comment
- Oh man, awesome, we can post our fanfictions on Wikipedia now? I thought we couldn't, but this page is here so it must mean we are allowed to. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.191.65.80 (talk) 00:06, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
- Sure, go ahead! — anonymous comment
I agree as well. This should be purged. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.187.80.252 (talk) 21:14, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
as much as i love slash... i have to agree - Killemall22 (talk) 19:42, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
- What about merging what's usefull to slash fiction and deleting the rest? – Lionel (talk) 03:03, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
- Well, I don't see how anything of this could be useful. It's a trivial interpretation by some obscure social scientist at best. But since you're one of the few on this discussion page who is not just an anonymous IP and who therefore might know the procedure of how to nominate this article for deletion, it would be nice if you could to so. — anonymous comment [1]