Forum:SH:Featured Fanon: A Proposal

Since the creation of Star Wars Fanon, we have tried to have our style emulate that of Wookieepedia. Whether that's our Manual of Style, Layout Guide, or our judgments about how an article should be written, it is an idea that has guided us since 2005. On a fanon wiki, it is also an idea that lends itself to elitism, where a small and select few dictate the guidelines for everyone based on how they themselves believe a page should look. This breeds notions of encyclopedic standards on a fanon wiki, buzzwords like "professionalism," and the driving out of users whose writing skills are not up the level that we unnecessarily demand of them&mdash;and with no way to help them improve.

It is time for this to change. I believe that in order for Star Wars Fanon to ever have a shot at having new active users again, we have to break down these barriers to entry that we ourselves created over the last several years, barriers that made a whole community leave and never return. This is going to be the overriding theme of a number of proposals that I make, and one of them is this.

Featured Fanon.

What does that mean? I am proposing that we eliminate the Good Article and Featured Article processes in favor of a new process, Featured Fanon. Rather than focusing on encyclopedic elements about how the article is written, this will instead focus on the story content. While there will be some mechanical requirements such as spelling and grammar, there is one big question you need to ask yourself when you decide whether to vote for an article: did I enjoy the story it told? If the answer is yes, vote for the article. Think of it like Quote of the Week for articles, only it's my hope that it will come with fewer dumb objections than the ones that plague Quote of the Week.

The importance of this, in terms of what it can mean for this wiki, cannot be understated. On the big picture level, it removes an elitist process and replaces it with one that anyone can easily access; writing a Featured Article is ridiculously hard for most people, but writing an enjoyable story can be easier. Additionally, we have no real system for reviewing and giving feedback on people's storytelling abilities. Featured Articles, for example, focus on the technical aspects of encyclopedic writing (something unnecessary on a fanon wiki), but Featured Fanon's review process would be a story review process. You can give people real, critical feedback that will actually have an impact on their writing ability, rather than objections like "this is not a neutral point of view" that are nonsensical on a fanon wiki.

That is the basic concept. We get rid of FAs and GAs and replace them with Featured Fanon, a far more accessible process that will actually have real and meaningful results for those who participate in it. If you like this basic idea, please say so in the comments below. Once I see a consensus about the concept, I will dive deeper into it and begin drafting the specifics of the process itself. Thank you for taking the time to read this. - Brandon Rhea (talk)  23:59, July 12, 2013 (UTC)