Forum:SH:The future of Star Wars Fanon

Hi there. I’m Brandon Rhea, your friendly neighborhood bureaucrat. I enjoy classic rock, politics, and long walks on the beach... I’m sorry, where was I? Oh right.

You may have noticed that nothing really happens on Star Wars Fanon anymore. It’s become stagnant. It’s not backtracking to anything undesirable, but we could clearly be doing much better. The one thing we’ve been lacking the last few years now is initiative. Neither individual users or the community as a whole have taken initiative in moving Star Wars Fanon forward. This is something that we need to change if we want to get out of the rut that we’re in now.

I’ve taken a noticeable step back from the wiki. This was intentional, because the wiki relied too heavily on me to do way too much, and sometimes almost everything. I don’t think this rut we’re in proves that the wiki can’t function without me, but it does prove something else: the wiki needs clear leadership.

Goodwood and Trak Nar have made it clear to me that they want someone to stand up and be the wiki's leader, at least symbolically. Obviously, given the nature of this wiki, this doesn’t mean someone who will make decisions on their own, but it does mean someone who has to be the central figurehead to move the wiki along.

As the only active bureaucrat, that would be me.

To get started in moving forward, there are four key things we need.

We need to be a community
We like to say we’re a community, but we often fail in actually living up to that. One of the best traits of any community, both online and off, is helpfulness, particularly in terms of helping other community members. This is one thing that we really need to improve upon, particularly when it comes to drawing in people who are going to post fan fiction and who are brand new to the wiki editing experience. We don’t have the visual editor here on Star Wars Fanon, so we’re entirely in source mode&mdash;which makes helpfulness extra important for those who have never edited a wiki before.

The gist of what I’m trying to say is this: we call ourselves a community, but we’re really a loose collection of alliances and random electrons bouncing about the space of this wiki. To use the term “community” to define the Star Wars Fanon userbase is to code up a new definition of the term, one that forgets that the real definition is inherently social and collective. Instead, we’re just a list of individual users who pay lip service to the word “community” because it’s what wikis are supposed to be.

What is a community? Definitionally speaking, it’s a social group of people who exist within a specific place, share a leadership, and have common culture and heritage. We have all of those things: we’re a group of people, we can be social with one another, we’re all on this wiki, we have admins and community decision making, and we share the common interest of writing Star Wars fanon and fan fiction.

And yet there’s something missing...

In the modern sense, a community is all those things but with another very important aspect: a community is a place where people work together towards common goals. We don’t do that. We’re all here together, and yet we stand apart. Part of working together includes helping people, and that means actually helping other users rather than just telling them what they’re doing wrong.

What do I mean by this? There’s one example that comes to mind immediately. Fix a page, don’t just slap a template on it. If someone posts a page that only has an infobox, write a sentence based on that infobox. It’ll take you 5 seconds to write “Steve Skywalker was a Jedi Knight during the time of the New Republic” and publish it. Then leave a message for the author politely explaining that they need to include at least a sentence of content when they post an article. That, combined with the help you’ve already given them, fosters community spirit and lets people know that the users here are here to help, not just dictate rules and say what everyone is doing wrong.

Unfortunately, we’ve always represented something more towards the latter rather than the former. If we can remember that our time is better spent taking a few extra minutes to fix up an article rather than slapping a template and a warning that doesn’t really tell a user that much, we can do better with new users. Obviously you can’t do that to someone forever, but don’t fall back to the other extreme which is to not do it at all.

That brings me to my next point.

We need to step outside our comfort zones
This may be off-putting at first, but we need to step outside of our comfort zones and take risks. One thing I’ve noticed for awhile now is that fanon content will be posted here no matter what we do&mdash;and what we do is very little. We could get rid of all rules and get rid of the administrators and even other users, and one way or another people will be posting their fanon content. There are over 31,000 articles on this wiki, so that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, really.

It’s in that regard that we shouldn’t be afraid to try new things. We need to strive to transform this wiki into a fan fiction-oriented one, so we should be taking risks and doing things that aren’t just par for the course, playing it safe type of actions. We’re not going to break fanon. If we fail miserably in whatever we try to do for fan fiction, we always have fanon to fall back on. We’ve already solidified ourselves pretty well for fanon, so if we take risks now then we have nothing to lose but so much to gain.

This doesn’t mean we have to start activating Wikia's social-oriented features, but we as a community do need to get over the idea that we’re an encyclopedic wiki. We’re not, and we never have been. I and others drilled that into people’s heads a long time ago, and we were wrong. As Goodwood knows, one thing I like to say is that we’re not an encyclopedia of information, but rather a repository of creation. We don’t need to be as strict as Wookieepedia when it comes to encyclopedic guidelines, because we’re not an encyclopedia. I’m not suggesting a total reversal or that we throw out the baby with the bath water, but we can pull back a bit on the amount of encyclopedic rules we have. The way I see it, if someone wants to write in British English rather than American English, for example, who cares? I sure don’t.

Another word we should avoid, because it really doesn’t mean anything, is “professional.” We used to say this word all the time; we’d say we need a hardline MOS and adherence to it so we could be “professional.” We had to restrict what people could do on their user pages so we could be “professional.” Etc. Etc. Etc.

What does that mean? I don’t know. Do you? I doubt it.

Even if you have an answer, I bet we could find 10 different answers from 10 different people. It’s a word that gives us and other people a false sense of what we’re aiming for, whereas in reality it doesn’t mean much. We want to make sure we look competent in running a wiki and acting like a community, such as enforcing whatever rules we do have, but let’s discard meaningless words like “professional.”

We also need to recognize that there are inherent social aspects to this wiki, much more so than an encyclopedia like Wookieepedia. We should be a group of people who come together specifically to talk to one another. We shouldn’t be Wookieepedia where the only discussion that takes place is about an article, about new policies, guidelines, etc., or about policy violations and what not. We want to foster discussion, because that’s what will foster a community here.

Conversation should be booming on this wiki. If people even want to have off-topic conversations on their talk pages, I say we let them, so long as it doesn’t become a distraction. It will foster community, allow people to interact and become friends, and serve the ultimate goal: to be a fan fiction community that interacts with one another, gives feedback, offers advice, writes reviews, etc. That’s how we can get out of the rut of people only keeping to themselves, particularly once we work to bring in new fan fiction writers&mdash;especially those that come from websites where discussion is standard practice.

If we can accept all of this, take risks, embrace the fact that we’re a social repository rather than an encyclopedia, and be bold with new ideas, we can be a wiki that even those who don’t like fanon will be able to respect. We’ll have a community and a group purpose rather than just an individual collection of pages.

What do we need in order to do all of this?

We need a core philosophy
I have a strong wiki philosophy that guides me as an administrator here. Most of my philosophy is what I’ve already said, but I’ll say mine specifically in a nutshell (watch this turn into a multi-paragraph ramble in 3...2...1...)

We should be here to help people and recognize that most people we attract, either for fanon or fan fiction, are new to the wiki editing experience, which is much different than many other websites out there. We need to give time, patience, and leeway to new people, otherwise heavy-handedness risks scaring people off. Given the large fan fiction networks out there, scaring one person off could also lead to them telling their friends never to come here either. It's the two-headed Hydra.

The best way for a user to learn about our wiki’s rules isn’t by reading policies alone, but also by actively editing on the wiki and by listening to what I hope is constructive and friendly feedback being left on their user talk pages by admins and other users alike. Making some initial mistakes isn’t something I want to see people banned over, but something they can learn from and improve upon.

Remember, when you combine inexperience with the fact that we have a lot of rules, this wiki can feel overwhelming and intimidating. Leave warnings and, if necessary, bans, for when it looks like someone is ignoring your feedback. Stick to encouragement and positive reinforcement for everyone else for as long as possible.

Also remember, Star Wars Fanon is weird. One of the strangest things about its success is that, from a conceptual standpoint, it shouldn’t have succeeded. A place for fanon and fan fiction where articles have to be formatted like canon entries on Wookieepedia, and where things like the metric system or American spelling are enforced? That doesn’t seem like a successful model, but, with a lot of trial and error, it did. Considering we’re a wiki that never should’ve worked, we can have a philosophy that values risk and bold choices. We've already beaten the odds once.

So what should our philosophy be? We should be a community of writers whose goal is to help each individual member improve upon their article writing and/or their fan fiction writing by providing positive encouragement, reinforcement, and feedback, while valuing bold action for the improvement of the community.

Who we do we need for that?

We need you
A community can’t be a community without the people within it. This isn’t an Admins Only show. I can’t stress enough how vitally important each and every one of you reading this is to the community. Alone we’re just ourselves, but together we can be a great wiki that works. Your opinion matters. You should feel comfortable expressing a dissenting opinion. Also make sure that your opinion is your own.

If you agree with something, agree with it because you think it’s the right course of action. If you don’t agree with it, disagree with it because you don’t think it’s the right course. Opinion bandwagons aren't good for the wiki. If you disagree, don’t be a naysayer, but offer alternatives. Be constructive, not obstructionist.

I don’t say that because I think I need to, though. I have faith in all of the positive contributors, from the casual fanon writer to the admin team. We have people like all of the new users who contribute fanon and are looking to make a mark on the Star Wars universe. We have people like the TK-999 who are great with the technical aspects of wikis. We have people like Atarumaster88 and Fiolli who are not as active as other users, but are still pillars of our community.

You are all important, and you are all part of this process.

Now what?

We need to get started
We’re not under the gun, because we’ll always remain as we are with little effort to maintain our current state, but why not get started immediately? Soon, after consulting with Goodwood and Trak Nar, I’ll be proposing some policies and changes that will really help this wiki. Two that are coming very soon are:


 * A new image policy&mdash;this will update the image policy to take into account all uploading methods, make the policy easier to understand, and have an accompanying tutorial to help people understand the policy better.
 * A new main page&mdash;this new main page design will emphasize fan fiction, allowing fan fiction writers to feel more welcome.

And then John was a zombie.

I hope you guys are as excited about this new chapter for Star Wars Fanon as we administrators are. Feel free to chime in below. Thanks for reading! - Brandon Rhea (talk)  02:33, December 29, 2011 (UTC)