Fanlore forums

[aethel]

Wiki editing is fun and a fannish activity like any other. Sharing and discussing what we love is part of what we do as fans, and there are many fans who might love Fanlore if they had the chance to get to know the wiki and the community surrounding it. Right now doing that on Fanlore is difficult for people new to wiki editing, and even experienced editors sometimes feel alone in what they are doing.

Therefore, there is one thing we hope to get off the ground this year, and it’s one many of you have asked for: a wiki forum.

It could be a place where people:

- introduce themselves / get to know one another / chat informally
- ask questions about wiki editing, and answer one anothers’ questions
- collaborate/brainstorm on and squee about wiki pages
- ask questions about Fanlore policies, and receive answers from Fanlore Wiki Committee members
- find previously answered questions without having to de-lurk

Since late last term, there have also been discussions within the OTW (our parent organization) about establishing public org-wide forums and how to incorporate the desired Fanlore forum into that structure. But rather than wait on org-wide forums, we thought Fanlore could more quickly and easily set up a forum hosted by a third party.

Currently, we are looking at Vanilla Forums for hosting. It has several advantages: you could sign in with other accounts (twitter, google, fb), we could have a custom domain name, and we would be able to move it to our own servers without losing content if we needed to. Most importantly, it appears to be the only viable option for accessible forum software, but if someone familiar with accessibility issues can offer alternative suggestions, please let us know.

Once we have a Fanlore forum, we might be able to add other OTW spaces (for example an AO3 forum) to the existing account at a later date.

Now we want to hear from you:

- What do you hope to see in a forum? What would make you want to use it? (What would put you off from using it?)
- Which topics and threads would you like to have?
- Some ideas: FAQ, introduction thread, compilation of talk page discussions, pages in progress, announcements, news, fannish history discussions, suggestions, gardeners, …

At present, the wiki committee doesn’t have experience setting up or running a forum, so input from anyone with forum expertise would be appreciated and fans willing to help as a moderator would be welcomed with open arms.

We’re in the early stages of planning, so really, any sort of input is appreciated!

Comments

FortuneCity

[greerwatson.livejournal.com]

It strikes me that something like this might be very useful when one wants to alert people to a situation. For a few days at the beginning of May, I was frantically busy (see this page on my LJ blog (http://greerwatson.livejournal.com/12449.html)); but I still had enough sense of responsibility vis-à-vis fandom at large that I wanted to tell folks at Fanlore that FortuneCity had gone down on the 1st of May, taking quite a lot of fan sites with it. However, I couldn't figure out the best way to do this. It didn't seem quite page-specific enough for "Attention: Gardeners"; but contacting the board seemed more appropriate to policy issues.

Hence this post, if you see what I mean.

I've made a page List of FortuneCity Fansites (http://fanlore.org/wiki/List_of_FortuneCity_Fansites) so that they can be documented, with their URLs. However, no one else has added anything to it. How does one get the word out?

When GeoCities disappeared, there was quite a lot of prior publicity. People got worried, and had various little projects to preserve info about them. FortuneCity has just...vanished.

Right at the moment, it is still possible to do a site search on Google ("site:fortunecity.com FANDOM"), and at least come up with the names of sites so that they can be hunted down later on the Wayback Machine. You can even look at cached pages, where they exist—though sadly, about a week ago, someone purged all the cached graphics (which means the pages only have text, plus blank rectangles where graphics used to be). Still, for the moment, one can at least locate them, sort them by fandom, and get their addresses for further reference.

In a few months, all the cached pages will be gone; and a Google search will no longer be possible.

See, that's where a forum would come in really handy!

Re: FortuneCity

[morgandawn]

For now this is the perfect place to bring up these issues and ask for help. and there is also the gardeners mailing list where you can raise issues and ask questions.

I'll link to your post at my LJ. My thinking is this: we pull together a list of fandoms on a Google spreadsheet. We each take one fandom and using the Google search function, grab the first...5? pages of search results and add the URLs to the Fortune City Fanlore page.

I'll cross-post this to the Gardeners mailing list.

Re: FortuneCity

[aethel]

Yes, this would be an excellent use of the forum. In the meantime, you can make a new post on the Dreamwidth community about this issue. Or I could do it for you if you'd rather. But this is the first I've heard about FortuneCity at all :(

By the way, here is a list of all the fortunecity URLs currently linked from Fanlore pages:

http://fanlore.org/w/index.php?title=Special:LinkSearch&target=*.fortunecity.com

Re: FortuneCity

[greerwatson.livejournal.com]

Or I could do it for you if you'd rather.

Please. I'm on LJ but not DW, so I can't start posts.