Fanlore's Journal

During the past few months the Wiki committee has not completed several projects that we wanted to complete and has not communicated with Fanlore users as much as we wanted to. There have been various reasons for this, including a shortage of personnel, overscheduled staffers, and unfinished past business. We sincerely apologize and are determined to do better.

We have worked on improving our internal documentation and training material and are now proud to say that we are able to open recruiting for new Wiki members. Specifically, we are looking for two staff members and one design specialist.

Staff members are responsible for the day-to-day work of the Wiki committee. We respond to questions and complaints; shape Fanlore policies, categories, and tutorials; assist the gardeners; try to promote Fanlore; plan larger projects, and generally try to be as helpful as possible. No special experience is required, only the ability to work in a team and an interest in fannish history and Fanlore in particular.

If you are interested, please take a look at the volunteers page.

We are also looking for a design specialist to create a new design and skin for Fanlore, with special emphasis on usability and accessibility. If you have experience with front-end web development and web design, please check out the volunteers page.

If you're not interested in a staff position, but would like to be a gardener, please contact the Wiki committee.

Applications for staff positions are due November 4th. If you have any questions about volunteering we'll be happy to answer them.

We are looking forward to working with our new members, and we hope that with their help we'll be able to continue moving Fanlore forward in the next year.

The OTW, Fanlore's parent organization, is currently running its biannual fundraiser and used the opportunity to emphasize how great Fanlore is.

Fanlore, a Love Story

A quick search for the term "love" on Fanlore brings up nearly 7,000 results. In comparison, the term "write" brings up just under 5,000 results, there are just over 2,000 uses of "vid," and "art" is mentioned roughly 6,500 times. This seems appropriate, as the heart of fandom is about loving something. We are fans because we pour our passion into something we love, whether it be a band, a video game, or a novel.

In the age of the internet, one great way to say you love something - aside from 'i <3 u,' that is - is to create a wiki about it. Fanlore, OTW's wiki, is a living record of all things fannish, dynamic and regularly changing. The "stories" that reside on Fanlore are ones told by fans whose love for a genre, work, fandom activity, or moment in fan history led them to create an entry and tell the story in their own words. Fanlore itself is the story beneath the story: it is the fan-run support structure that allows these stories to be stored and accessed by other fans.

The fan community deserves to see our tale told and to have somewhere we can use our own voice to tell the tale. Fanlore provides a place to do so, one cared for and maintained by fans themselves in yet another show of - you guessed it - love.

Help keep Fanlore growing and thriving - please donate today.

The 2013 OTW term has begun! The current Wiki committee members are Tiyire (chair), Doro, and Emufarmers.
We are very happy to work with two excellent new liaisons from other committees: Alison from Volunteers & Recruiting, who helps us be more organized, and Agnieszka from Communications, who reanimated our twitter account. Check it out: fanlore_news. In addition, Maia Bobrowicz joined Ira Gladkova as our second Board liaison. Welcome!

Wiki is making progress working on our procedures and documentation and tying up loose ends from last year. We're talking with several committees about better cooperation and how they can help us with our projects for this term, and so far this works out great.

From time to time questions about Fanlore's Image Policy appear on other sites and in conversations, and we are aware that confusion exists on what takes place on Fanlore. We are concerned about this matter and want to balance, as well as we can, the desires of individuals with the overall mission of the Fanlore project to document and preserve fannish history.

We want to be responsive to people's concerns but these are not usually quick matters to address, as various parts of the organization need to be consulted when it comes to policy reviews and the impact of potential changes. What we can do more quickly we will. In the meantime, several editors have added missing templates and permission statuses to image files - thank you!

As per our image policy, images that are uploaded without the permission of the creator need to meet fair use rules. As with most open posting sites, Wiki can't check every upload; we make sure that fair use rules are met when we are contacted about specific images. Legal advises Wiki on fair use disputes brought before us and every case has been solved to the best of our ability. On that note, if you do have concerns about the use of one of your images, please follow the process laid out in the Image Policy.

Legal and Wiki will be in discussion in coming months regarding the image policy as part of our committee's overall review of procedures and documentation. The concerns that have been expressed by fanartists, fans, and other parties will certainly be considered as part of that process. We will be posting more about the results of that review and clarifications for editors when it becomes possible to do.

Dear Fanlore readers, editors, and gardeners,

The 2012 OTW term has officially ended, and we wanted to take the opportunity to say THANK YOU to everyone who contributed to Fanlore this year, talked about it with friends, offered encouragement, and made this site great. Fanlore has over 22,000 articles today; that's over 6,000 more than in July 2011, from when we have comparison data. You are all fantastic. Please go and take a look at all the great content our editors added this year!

Some things the Wiki committee did this year to help:

• upgraded MediaWiki


• fought spambots


• created new categories, templates, and infoboxes


• dealt with identity protection and fair use concerns

Before some of us go on holidays, a few updates on things:

• MediaWiki upgrade: You might have noticed some changes since we had to revert back to the default skin after the upgrade to another version of MediaWiki. We hope to be able to come closer to our old design, but with term break and the holidays coming it's difficult to say when that will be. We are confident that the current design of Fanlore is good enough for now, but please tell us if you encounter any problems and we'll try to fix it.


• Forums: We were planning to open a Fanlore forum this term – we already have the basic set-up – but the question of how, and who, to moderate it has delayed the process considerably. We will tackle this question again next term, hopefully with more success.


• Categories: We are aware that there are several open proposals regarding categories at the moment. We are sorry that we didn't have the energy to follow up on all of them. We definitely haven't overlooked them, and these are also on next term's agenda.


• Surveys: We don't know yet when we'll receive the results of the surveys from the Survey committee and from the Strategic Planning committee, but we will of course make them public when possible.

We are sorry to say that aethel, our Chair, will leave the committee next term. We are grateful for all her work and happy that she's staying on as a gardener and editor of Fanlore. Tiyire will take over as Chair of the committee.

As you can see, we already have several open projects to finish for next term. With the help of Volunteers & Recruiting we will also revise our recruitment process, our training for newcomers, and our internal documentation and procedures. This might take some time, but it is very important to ensure that Wiki can keep up with the work, and we hope that you will be patient with us while we sort out these internal matters. That said, we are optimistic that we will become even more efficient next term as a result.

If you're interested in helping us keep Fanlore running and expanding, please consider volunteering for Wiki next term! We will post more detailed explanations before recruiting opens again.

In short: THANK YOU for making Fanlore as fantastic as it is! <3