User:Atarumaster88/scratchpad

The Star Wars Fanon Wiki (often abbreviated SWFanon or SWF) is a Star Wars wikia for non-canon&mdash;or fanon&mdash;and fan fiction, Star Wars information. Founded by Neomessiah on August 30th, 2005, the wiki contains more than 17,000 articles as of July 2008. It is a part of Wikia's several Star Wars wikis, as well categorized in Wikia's Entertainment and Biggest Wikis hubs. Star Wars Fanon also has several sister wikis in other languages, including a German, Swedish, Spanish, and most recently Italian offshoot. The purpose of the Star Wars Fanon Wiki is to provide a wiki that creative Star Wars fans can publish their own fanon articles. As such, it provides an outlet for users to submit, collaborate, and read various fan-made works in a number of forms, ranging from detailed character articles to fan-fiction to photonovels, in a wiki format, as well as participate in the online community of the wiki.

Founding and early existence
The Star Wars Fanon Wiki was founded on August 30, 2005 by Neomessiah in an attempt to create a version of Wookieepedia for fan fiction. However, the wiki was not very active for several months and lacked active administrative staff. In May 2006, a reorganization was attempted as the wiki garnered more members, but shortly thereafter, several users were accused of vandalism by Wikia staff. The lack of active administration further hampered efforts to contain the vandals, as all attempts to elect an administrator had failed. Lacking users with the power to block policy violators and protect articles from vandalism, the wiki was vandalized repeatedly in June of 2006. The wiki still was without administrators and the extent of the vandalism was such that Wikia staff rolled back the database to undo the vandalism, which had the side effect of reverting or deleting numerous articles on the wiki.

However, after the database rollback, the wiki continued to grow, reaching an article count of one thousand in late June 2006. Also around this time, the First Wiki Awards were established and took place in early July of 2006. That same month also saw an IRC channel, #swfanon, established for the wiki, as well as the introduction of the Senate Hall, a forum for general community use modeled after a similar Wookieepedia structure of the same name. For less serious matters or for topics pertaining to the articles of the wiki, the Fanon Cantina was established to provide a venue for discussion of various fanon-related topics. Shortly thereafter, in August 2006, the wiki finally received its first administrator, Jennie Cooper, who was also granted the power to check users' IP ranges by Wikia staff to help combat vandalism. Cooper was not elected; although several elections had previously been held, Neomessiah, the sole Star Wars Fanon Wiki official with the power to promote users to administrators, had not been active and hadn't promoted any candidates to administrator, and several known vandals had sought election Instead, Cooper's administrative position was granted by Wikia staff member Lisa Carter as a means to combat vandalism. Two months later, Carter appointed three other administrators, JM76, Bub, and C3PO the Dragon Slayer as another measure to counter vandalism.

With the users feeling that the vandals were adequately dealt with, the wiki continued to grow. Themed user groups, known as clans, began to see greater prominence, with a Mandalorian-themed user group achieving particular prominence in the community. In February of 2007, the Star Wars Fanon Wiki was nominated and chosen as a Featured Wikia, earning it additional publicity. Also in February, the wiki started its first major portal-based project, sponsored by its Mandalorian-themed user group. In April 2007, over a year and a half after its inception, the wiki held its first successful internal administrative elections, with Victor "Squishy Vic" Dorantes and Jack Phoenix chosen as new administrators for the site. That same month, the Second Wiki Awards were held to honor articles in twenty-seven different categories.

Reform
However, some of the Star Wars Fanon Wiki's users began to desire a number of reforms to the site, and were successful in implementing a number of new policies. For one, the user groups were banned in May of 2007,, as a consensus was reached among users that they detracted from the wiki. Two user groups, the Decreton Lords and High Priests were established to maintain the quality of the wiki's Featured Articles and Good Articles respectively. In addition, the wiki rewrote its manual of style and layout guide in an attempt to increase the quality of articles on the website. Policies were enacted mandating that all articles adhere to the wiki's standards for categorization and establishing guidelines for userpages. Two additional administrators, Wayne "CurrentBigThing" Lipman III and Jasca Ducato were elected in June of 2007 to help enforce these new standards. As such, July 2007 saw a purge of thousands of articles based on their conformity to categorization standards. Also, the Halo Fanon Wiki became the Star Wars Fanon Wiki's first official friend in July, with the two websites agreeing to link to each other on their respective main pages. Shortly thereafter, the StarWarsRP.com became the wiki's second official friend.

Later in 2007, two more administrators, Brandon Rhea and Christian "NKSCF" Ashley were elected by the community. A second mass review of the wiki's Featured Articles took place, as the standards for such articles had recently been made more exhaustive at the time, and numerous Featured Articles were demoted. The Star Wars Fanon Wiki community also altered its Good Article standards in an effort to make attaining Good Article status more demanding. In the final months of 2007, the Star Wars Fanon Wiki removed its partnership with the Halo Fanon Wiki via consensus, leaving StarWarsRP.com as its sole official friend.

Recent activities
Early in 2008, the wiki held its third annual wiki awards, handing out twenty-three awards to various users. Also at the beginning of the year, a proposal to change the name of the site from Star Wars Fanon Wiki to the Star Wars Fan-fiction Wiki was made, but was ultimately rejected by users. A full review of the site's Good Articles was initiated, designed to again check the site's Good Articles for quality after more revisions were made to the requirements. Later in 2008, the users of the Star Wars Fanon Wiki began a third review of the site's Featured Articles, largely because of a new provision prohibiting Mary Sues was established. A new collaborative fanon project, Project Cruentus was formed in April of 2008 and has proven successful in generating community-based content, including several Good Articles

2008 also saw several resignations from the site. Wiki founder Neomessiah announced in April that he was leaving the site in April of 2008, while administrators JM76 and Victor Dorantes both resigned in June of 2008. To replace them, two other administrators Gnosis is Knowledge and Michaeldsuarez were elected to replace them, and Brandon Rhea was promoted to bureaucrat.

Structure
The Star Wars Fanon Wiki is organized into several domains, or namespaces, for its content. The main location for user-created content is the Main namespace, where most articles reside. Unlike all other namespaces, pages in the Main namespace do not have prefixes preceding the article title. The Star Wars Fanon namespace is for site matters, such as the Featured Article nomination page. The User namespace provides each registered user with a userpage should they choose to create one, along with a talk page in the User talk namespace for communication with other users. The Forum namespace contains the wiki's five forum types, while the Image namespace encompasses the images uploaded onto the wiki. Category pages are used to help classify content on the Star Wars Fanon Wiki and also have their own namespace. Template pages contain preloaded content that users can place on other pages via wikicode. Also, a Help namespace exists to assist users. Last, the wiki also contains pages in the MediaWiki namespace, which are restricted to administrators and control various things about the site. Every namespace has a corresponding talk page (e.g. for the Forum namespace, the talk namespace is Forum talk), where users can post comments or have discussion about a given topic. Two specialized namespaces, along with their corresponding talk namespaces, are the HP and DL namespaces, intended for the use of the High Priests and Decreton Lords, two review-oriented groups of users who supervise the wiki's Good Articles and Featured Articles respectively.

Positions
There are a number of positions on the Star Wars Fanon Wiki that are assorted according to task, ranging from administrators to review boards for Star Wars Fanon's Good and Featured Articles. All the positions are currently elected by popular vote.

Bureaucrats
Bureaucrats on the Star Wars Fanon Wiki, sometimes referred to as "Supreme Chancellors", are endowed with the same powers as members of the administration, in addition to having the power to grant others with administrative power after community approval. Their votes must also be unanimous on administrative elections, giving them a sort of veto power. In order to be qualified for bureaucratship, a user must have served as an administrator for "some time" and have been a member of the community for at least five months. Four people have held the position of bureaucrat on the Star Wars Fanon Wiki, though two of them have retired. Neomessiah, the founder of the wiki, was the first bureaucrat and is now retired. Later bureaucrats include C3PO the Dragon Slayer, Victor "Squishy Vic" Dorantes, and most recently Brandon Rhea, though Dorantes resigned in June 2008.

High Priests
The High Priests are a user group created to manage the Star Wars Fanon Wiki's Good Articles and Improvement Drive. Their page was originally organized during a purge of Good Articles, but later had its name changed. The High Priests are named after a fan-made establishment created by a user on the Star Wars Fanon Wiki and have primary purview over the Good Articles. Their authority includes being able to remove Good Article nominations with a consensus of High Priest opinions. They also have final say on the approval of Good Article nominations, as a majority of High Priest votes are mandated for the successful passage. Another responsibility of the High Priests is to examine existing Good Articles for quality and remove the Good Article status from articles that are lacking. In addition, the High Priests were placed in charge of the Star Wars Fanon Wiki's Improvement Drive, but the Improvement Drive page has not been edited since April of 2008.

Decreton Lords
The purpose of the Decreton Lords review board is to examine the wiki's Featured Articles and Featured Article nominations for quality. Founded in the spring of 2007, the group has had a membership fluctuating from four to seven. There are currently six Decreton Lords. The group was named after a fanon organization of the same name, which allegedly served to strike down those who sought personal glory.

Originally, the Decreton Lords voted in conjunction with the general membership on Featured Article nominations, although Decreton Lord approval was mandated for passage of a nomination. However, in the summer of 2007, Featured Article nomination voting procedures on the Star Wars Fanon Wiki were changed to allow only Decreton Lords to vote on a given Featured Article nomination. They are also in charge of removing Featured Article status from Featured Articles that are deemed by the Decreton Lords to be unworthy of that status.

IRC channel
The Star Wars Fanon Wiki has its own Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel, #swfanon, which may be used by users for a variety of site-related purposes and discussions by users. The site also has a forum, dubbed the Alliance of Fanon, which can be used to discuss or plan meetings on the IRC channel. However, use of the channel is intermittent among users, with some users noting a paucity of administrators in the channel, much less activity.

Quote of the Week
The Star Wars Fanon Wiki maintains a supply of quotes which have been approved by the community for display on the site's main page for the length of a week, dubbed the Quote of the Week. Quotes of the Week were first established in late May of 2008, and any user can nominate a quote from the site for appearance on the main page. Once a quote is nominated, other users then vote on the quote until it either reaches enough votes for approval or is rejected by the community as a Quote of the Week candidate.

Criticism
The Star Wars Fanon Wiki is commonly criticized on several points, including the immaturity of its users, the lack of creativity and realistic content on its pages, as well as often blatant disregard for established canon. Another criticism is the lack of community editing, as users are restricted from making major edits to others' articles. A nomination for official friendship with the Star Wars Wiki for licensed canon, Wookieepedia, failed due to these complaints and the conduct of several users from the Star Wars Fanon Wiki on a counterpart thread on the Star Wars Fanon Wiki.

Previous criticisms of the Star Wars Fanon Wiki before policies were enacted to address them included the un-policed signatures used by many users, which were described as unprofessional, and the user clans, which some critics saw as pointless and only useful for garnering attention.

Acclaim
The Star Wars Fanon Wiki has been mentioned on several other wikis, such as the Science Fiction and Fantasy Wiki,, Darthipedia, and Wookieepedia. It was also the Featured Wikia for February of 2007. It has also been added to the Wikia Spotlight, a group of Wikis that have thumbnail promotional images appear to users surfing other wikis. A thread devoted to the Star Wars Fanon Wiki also exists on the Jedi Council Forums of the TheForce.Net, under its boards for fan-fiction.

The wiki has two official friends, Darthipedia and the SWRP.com, both of which have small features on the Star Wars Fanon Wiki on their sites. Both sites also have a number of members who also contribute to the Star Wars Fanon Wiki. However, in keeping with the humorous nature of the site, the Darthipedia article is a parody of the Star Wars Fanon Wiki.

In other languages
The Star Wars Fanon Wiki has several counterparts in other languages besides English. The first founded was a German offshoot, created on March 1, 2007 by Skywalker XL. A few months later, in late June, a Swedish Star Wars Fanon Wiki was founded by N@M3Le$ and a Spanish equivalent was founded by Victor Dorantes. Most recently, an Italian Star Wars Fanon Wiki was set up by Darth Welia in March of 2008.